


Inevitable, Inevitable

by Perkalil



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Some Drinking cause they’re adults, Swearing, TW posted chapter by chapter, post-show, surviving the apotheosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:44:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 39,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perkalil/pseuds/Perkalil
Summary: The Infected pushed her down the darkened hall. They must have cut the power when they came looking for her; it made finding her easier and her attempts at escape a lot more difficult. Emma could feel hands holding onto her arms and her shoulders, keeping her close and pushing her forward. The lights were flickering and Emma was terrified.orMy attempt at a post-show fic about Emma





	1. Chapter 1

The clapping faded as Emma was pulled back through a door. Hadn’t she just gone through there, wasn’t it a fucking loop? The… things, she guesses, found another exit, leading her down the hall in Clivesdale Hospital. 

She certainly couldn’t call these people her friends anymore, she’s not even sure she can call them people. Maybe she’ll stick with Infected. 

The Infected pushed her down the darkened hall. They must have cut the power when they came looking for her; it made finding her easier and her attempts at escape a lot more difficult. Emma could feel hands holding onto her arms and her shoulders, keeping her close and pushing her forward. The lights were flickering and Emma was terrified.

“No! No, nonononono, please! Please stop nonono!” Her voice cracked as they kept moving, the group pushing towards the stairs. Her bad leg felt like it was being stabbed by that goddamn rebar again every time she put pressure on it. Tears were streaming down her face in her terror and her breath was hitching in her throat. A sheen of sweat covered her face; they were moving so damn fast and her leg couldn’t take it. She couldn’t see where they were going because she was so damn short and the Infected Nora and Bill were walking in front of her.

She could feel the grip on her shoulders being readjusted, and did the only thing she could think of; she twisted her torso fully out of the thing’s grasp and ducked down, trying to break away from the singing aliens. 

“Emma! There’s no escape!” The Infected Paul sang as his grip on her arm tightened and he hauled her back upright. Emma let out a cry of frustration, her breaths coming in shallow pants as he looked her in the eye.   
“This is inevitable!” A few of the Infected in the group echoed his statement in harmony as they began to descend the stairs. Emma continued to plead and scream for someone to save her, for them to let her go, for anything than what the Infected had planned for her. Her cries fell on deaf ears as they wound down the flights to the basement of the hospital.

She was going to die. This Infected singing Paul was right; she was totally fucked and was going to die in Clivesdale.

They finally reached the basement level and paused, Emma was gasping for air from the exertion. Her leg was killing her and her energy was fading fast, but she was still struggling against the Infected that were holding onto her. She was Emma Perkins and she’d be damned if she was going to die without a fight. 

The Infected Ted appeared to still have his short temper, because he let go of her shoulders and kicked her in her bad thigh, causing Emma to shout in pain and fall to the floor in a heap. She scrambled up against the wall of the dark hallway they were in, looking up at the Hive creatures the same way a rabbit looks at a fox. They stared back at her, Ted smiling at her viciously (and still like a creep, it was terrifying how similar he remained to the human Ted). They were tinted blue, getting closer and closer. Emma expected it now, any second they’d rip out her guts and turn her into a singing, dancing zombie slave like the rest of them. She let out a stuttering sob and curled up to herself as tightly as she could.

She expected to die right then. What she didn’t expect was for the Infected Paul to push Ted, his own anger coming through. 

“Why would you do that?  
Emma will be one of us, she’ll be turned in seconds flat!  
You don’t need to cause her pain,  
You’ve done that for personal gain!” 

His impassioned anger was melodic, and even if it was beautiful, it grated on Emma’s ears. Paul hated singing, she can’t stand to hear him do it so much.

“Why do you care so much, Paul?” The Infected Ted called back, the other Infected joining in with a chorus underneath the quarreling duet.   
“I was just having fun watching how easily our prey fell, into our trap, into our cage.  
Emma is ours, the whole world our next stage.”

Emma watched the interaction with bated breath. It was almost like they had forgotten about her on the floor, too lost in the song to notice the person they were singing about. Everyone except Paul. His focus kept flicking from the other Infected to her.

Something was off about that. Emma tried concentrating on that fact. He wasn’t acting exactly like the other Infected. Something was different about him, something…

Nope. Emma’s wishful thinking was shattered when he opened his mouth again and began to sing.

“You don’t deserve to watch her turn,  
None of you deserve, so in return,  
I ask that you let me show Emma the way of the Hive,  
Alone! If you don’t mind.”

He had shifted, standing between Emma and the other Infected in a choreographed stand-off. The other Infected ooh-ed and ahh-ed quietly, waiting for Ted’s response.

Emma held her breath.

“Alright. You take Emma, we take-”

Infected Ted paused for dramatic effect (in another world, another timeline, Emma would have rolled her eyes).

“The WOOOOOORRRLLD!” The other Infected swelled their chorus underneath Ted’s belting as they raced away, down to the exit of the hospital. They ran together as a synchronized unit (again, if she wasn’t going to die, she would have laughed). Emma let out a shaky breath, her focus shifting back to Paul. Paul who was Infected. Paul who was going to infect her.

He pulled her back up to her feet harshly, and without permission Emma felt her mouth moving again, begging him to let go of her. “Paul, please, please, listen to me. You have to snap out of it, you hate musicals, please Paul PLEASE!” He paid no attention to her and shoved her into an empty room. She stumbled until she caught herself on the bed in the center of the room. She turned as quickly as she could with her bad leg, and her panic returned in full force as the Infected Paul closed the door behind him.

“Emma, I'm sorry.” He started singing that goddamn song again and all Emma could do was cry, words not even forming anymore. He started walking toward her and she tried her best to hold back her choked scream. She pushed herself onto the bed and she could feel her heartbeat in her leg. The roaring in her ears accompanied her panic, nearly blocking out the singing, but her wide eyes were trained on Paul. Thoughts kept running through her head, she couldn’t stop them. 

She was going to die. She was going to die in goddamn Clivesdale and there was no escape. Paul was right, it was Inevitable.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some resolution.

“Em? Emma, I’m so sorry, Emma, come back to me!” She just now registered how close Paul had gotten to her. He was practically on top of her, his hands hovering on either side of her face. She couldn’t stop the scream that came out of her ragged throat, falling against the lumpy hospital bed beneath her. As soon as her head hit the mattress she shielded her face with her hands, her sobbing uncontrolled.

“P-paul, please d-don’t.” She managed to choke out between sobs.

“Emma! Emma, look at me, please look at me!” It took a few seconds for Emma’s panicked mind to catch up to what her ears were hearing. Her sobs quieted down once the connection was made like a click in her mind. Paul wasn’t singing. He was speaking to her. He was just talking, no rhymes, no rhythm. 

Trembling, she moved her hands from her face, craning her neck to look at Paul. He was crouched next to the bed, his arm outstretched toward her. His eyes. His eyes were concerned and sad, they weren’t crazed like they were when he was-

“Paul?” she hated how weak and fragile her voice sounded saying his name, but it was the best she could manage after screaming and yelling since she’d been trapped. Her eyes searched his, hoping that this wasn’t a trap. She was terrified and confused. What the fuck was going on?

“What the fuck is happening?” The words came out before she realized she was saying them. 

Paul lowered his head as he released a breath. When he lifted up his head, he was smiling at her. Not a crazy, Infected smile, but a real, genuine smile. “Emma, I was acting. I may hate musicals, but I know how to blend into a group.”

Emma just stared at him in disbelief. How in the hell could she believe him? He tricked her before, he could still be Infected. “How the fuck am I supposed to believe that? You were singing, fuck, you could still be Infected.” She tried lifting herself off the bed but her energy was gone, the adrenaline that had been fueling her since she first saw Paul abandoning her. She collapsed back onto the mattress with a grunt.

“Emma, when I was at the Starlight, they tried to Infect me. They said the spores would get into my lungs and I’d be one of them.” His hand went to grab her but she pulled it away, looking at him in fear. “But it didn’t work. I couldn’t hear their music, and my dancing wasn’t syncing, but I couldn’t let them know that. So I tried to keep up with them, and when they started coming here, to Clivesdale, I knew they were coming for you. So I convinced them to let me lead the charge, to get you alone so we could get the hell out of here.”

“I- you-” Emma stammered, searching for the words she wanted to say. “But your singing was so good?”

Paul looked at her from his place at the side of the bed. “That’s the advantage of leading the song, they pick up everything around you. I could sing Moana again to prove it to you.”

“Yes.” The answer was out of her mouth instantly. “But not Moana. Sing something from Aladdin.”

“Oh, uh, okay. I don’t know that one really well, but uh.” Paul cleared his throat and began singing pieces from songs he could remember. He did sound the same as before, but singing alone Emma could tell it was still pretty bad. He stopped once he realized he had begun singing stuff from Frozen instead, looking at her expectantly.

Emma looked at his hands, still resting on the bed next to her. She tentatively reached out her own hand, grabbing his as a test. God, it even feels different than when he was ‘infected’. Tears welled up in her eyes again.

“Paul, I was, I was so scared, I thought you were-” She started rambling, but Paul cut her off by holding onto her hand with both of his own, trying his best to comfort her.

“Shh, Em, it’s okay. I couldn’t act like myself.” Emma was watching him as he spoke, trying to find any reason to not believe him. He was looking at their hands, her knuckles white from holding onto him so tightly. “I tried to warn you, in the song. God, that was really hard to make up on the spot. I’m not exactly a lyrical genius, but the poetry electives I took in college really paid off.” He looked up at her, a hint of a smile around his eyes. She managed a snort trying to picture Paul in a poetry class. “I had to keep up the act until I was sure they were gone. The things that were with us weren’t the only Hive things in the hospital. Emma, I’m so sorry for scaring you, I promise I’m me.” 

She looked at him for a moment longer, then pulled her hand away from him. He looked shocked and hurt for a moment before realizing that she was pushing herself into a sitting position on the bed. She grimaced at the pain in her leg when she shifted; fuck, this hurt like a bitch. Paul noticed this and stood up.

“Is it your leg? There should be something for it here, I mean this is a hospital.” He began wandering around the room, opening drawers to look for some kind of painkiller. Emma couldn’t do much more than watch him warily; he seemed like he was the real Paul, but how the hell could she know? She had really only known him for two days, and now she’s putting her life in his hands. If only Jane could see her now…

“Okay, so there’s no painkillers in this room, but I think there was a supply closet a few doors down that should have medicines in it.” Paul was talking mostly to herself and shook Emma out of her train of thought.

“Wait, you’re going back out there? What if those things are still waiting?” She looked at him as if he had just burst into song again. “Are you fuckin nuts?!”

“You’re in pain, and I’m going to find something to help you.” He strode across the room in a few strides, and anger surged through Emma like a shot.

“Dammit Paul, stop trying to play the freaking hero! If you go out there and get Infected, the next thing that the Hive is gonna do is have you lead everyone straight to me. And let’s say you do get something for my leg without getting killed; what the hell is next? We can’t live in the basement of a Clivesdale hospital for the rest of our lives! We don’t have food or water or any weapons!” Paul had frozen once she started yelling, and for some reason it made her angrier. “So we’re both leaving now, together. If we split up we’ll be fucked.”

Emma tried getting off the bed on her own, but as soon as put pressure on her leg it buckled. Paul darted forward and grabbed her before she could hit the floor. Emma grunted in pain and mumbled a few expletives. She held onto him and steadied herself with a breath. 

“Emma, are you sure you can do this?” Paul looked down at her, rubbing circles into her shoulder with his thumb. “I can seriously just go a few doors down and look for something, crutches at least.” 

“No, I’m fine, we can go to the damn storage room together.” Emma grit her teeth and took a step forward. “Let’s just go now, before they come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you buy Paul’s explanation? Do you think the dangers passed? Who knows! We’ll find out in the next chapter! Feel free to leave kudos and comments!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a change in perspective; a bit of danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!TW FOR VIOLENCE AND BLOOD!!!!!!

Even if Paul was scared out of his mind that the Infected were still in the hospital or that Emma’s leg was going to give out on her, he was not going to argue with her. He was definitely more scared of her than he was of a meteor-led singing army. He was helping her down the hall, careful to move slowly so Emma wouldn’t have to push herself too much. There was only cleaning supplies in the closet he had spotted, so they were hoping to find another closet in the hall that had something that could help her. He could tell Emma was trying to hide the amount of pain she was in, but he could hear her panting and taking in sharp breaths anytime she put too much pressure on her bad leg. 

“Just a few more feet Em, we’re almost there.” He tried to reassure her, and his worry only increased when all she could offer was a shuddering breath. They reached the next closet and he rested her against the wall, testing the handle. It opened without protest to reveal actual medical supplies. “Thank god. Okay, there’s some bandages, and uh, oh here’s some painkillers, you’re gonna need those.” He was digging through the shelves of the closet, looking for anything else they could need. “Oh, a bag! We definitely need this to put stuff in-”

“Paul-” Emma’s voice sounded from outside of the closet. He thought he heard some shuffling from outside of the closet but he shook his head. Must have been the tongue depressors he had just rifled through. 

“Emma, I found some stuff!” He called out to her, walking a little deeper into the closet. “I’m going to check and see if there are any crutches in here, it would really help you with your leg!”

“Paul!” Emma’s voice cried out, fear lacing her shout. Paul turned back to the door, and instead of seeing her shadow against the wall, he saw two figures entering the small room. The Infected Ted, and pressed against him with a surgical scalpel to her throat was Emma. She was silent as Ted pushed her forward, but her face was twisted in pain and her neck was strained to keep the scalpel from cutting into her. The Infected Ted chuckled, his eyes malicious as he stared Paul down. 

“You thought we would not know Paul?” His voice was monotonous, like when the Hive spoke to him after Bill’s death. His eyes had turned blue, oh fuck this was just not normal. “Foolish man, the Hive always knows. I am surprised you tricked my children for that long. But it does not matter now. They know they have been wronged, and they will come for you. You and Emma will choke on the blood of the Hive and you will join my children in worship of me.” Ted shoved Emma forward and she crashed into Paul with a cry, clinging to his frame and trembling. 

“Paul, what are we gonna do?” she rasped into his chest, her face buried in his shirt. Paul shielded her from the Infected Ted as he watched them carefully. “We’re fucking trapped.”

“I know, I know, it’s okay.” He spoke to her quietly as he led the both of them further into the closet, his feet sweeping behind him to feel out anything that could help them. “We can do this, we just have to find something to knock Ted out with.” He took another step and felt his foot hit something solid. Paul looked down and saw a cane, one of several that were stacked against the back wall. He shifted Emma so she was looking up at him.

“Paul, if we die-” She started, but he cut her off quickly, speaking as softly as he could.

“Emma, there are canes on the wall behind me. When I let go of you, I’m going to grab one and try to knock Ted out. You grab one too. If we can fight him off, we are getting the hell out of this hospital and going somewhere else. Clivesdale is a huge city, no way could they have gotten to the whole city in a few hours. If I can’t fight him off, then….” He paused for a moment, looking at her, as if he was trying to memorize her face. “I want you to know that I think you’re incredibly brave. And that you are most certainly every bit as good as your sister.” 

Before she even had a chance to process what he had said, Paul let go of her and spun around to grab the cane behind him. He turned again and swung, knocking the scalpel out of Ted’s hand. He could see Emma move behind him to grab another cane as Ted rushed forward, and he swung wildly, striking the other man in the shoulder. The blow sent Ted to the side, knocking his head on a shelf. Blue blood seeped from the head wound as he pushed himself back into a standing position, and Paul swung again. He kept swinging until Ted fell to the floor, then Paul began kicking as well as beating the Infected until the blunt end of the cane was stained a bright azure and Ted no longer moved. He then hit Ted’s head a few more times with the cane until he resembled that cop Sam; his blue brain was exposed and squished from the cane. Paul stood over the body, breathing heavily for a moment.

“Is he… dead?” Emma finally spoke. “I mean, you know, as dead as he can be?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Paul turned back to her; she had grabbed the bag he had been filling with gauze, bandages, and painkillers and had slung it over her shoulder. She was leaning on the cane and looked at Ted’s body in disgust. He stuffed his cane into the bag, grabbing another roll of bandages to separate the bloodied end from the medical supplies. “We should get going, because more will be headed here any second.” 

Emma nodded quickly, and after helping her over the body, the pair fled the closet and made a hasty retreat to the exit sign glowing red against the flickering lights of the hall. They flung open the floor and had to squint to let their eyes adjust to the daylight of downtown Clivesdale. The city looked normal still, people driving and walking down the street, no signs of flash mobs anywhere and not a single note could be heard over the sounds of traffic and chatter.

“Alright, Emma, let’s find someplace safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first off, I'm sorry for poor Ted, but please know that he was infected and not actually him. I chose Paul's point of view for this chapter because I just couldn't see this one from Emma's mind. Did you like the change of pace? What do you think is gonna happen in Clivesdale? I encourage you to leave kudos or thoughts or suggestions in the comments, seeing that people are liking what I'm writing is such an amazing feeling and I'd love to connect with all of you!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment to recover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight TW for blood/medical things!!  
> Make sure to read the notes at the end of this chapter, I need some opinions and would love to hear from you readers!

Emma made it two blocks from the hospital before she couldn’t walk anymore. She fell against the office building that they were walking past and let out a soft moan in pain. “Paul, I can’t. I can’t keep walking, shit this hurts.”

Paul glanced back at her and quickly made up his mind. He grabbed her cane from her and stuffed it in the bag they had grabbed, then lifted her up bridal style. Emma leaned her head against his shoulder and screwed her eyes shut. It felt like her leg was on fire, and she hated not being able to fucking walk without needing help. At least with Paul carrying her, she wasn’t making it any worse. 

God, how fucked up was this? Emma couldn’t help but think about everything that had happened in the past 48 hours. She was just a barista at a crappy coffee shop trying to get through community college, and now she was the survivor of an alien apocalypse trying to hide from the same damn aliens in a different city. So much shit had happened, and she had seen so many people just fucking die. But at least she still had Paul with her. Paul. Without Paul, she would have definitely had died in Beanies, and then so many other times after that. She’s sure now that it’s really him; no way would an Infected kill one of their own Hive. She could hear Paul talking to her, what was he saying? His voice came back as she refocused her attention to him. 

“...we can’t go to the hospital, but we can go someplace public to hide for a while, then we can start getting food and supplies and find a way out of here.” He shifted her in his arms and Emma felt like a white hot poker stabbed her in the leg. She fisted his shirt in her hands and muffled a scream against his shoulder. Paul picked up the pace to turn the corner at the next block, apologizing profusely. Emma bit her lip to stop her from crying. God, she’s cried so much today. She opened her eyes to see where they were going, and saw Paul was making a beeline for the public library across the street.

“The library?” Her voice was still raspy, and she hated it. She’s a grown woman and she can’t even speak normally.

“Yeah, I figured since it was the middle of a work day no one would be in there and we could try and fix up your leg again.” Paul hurried up the stairs to the large building, trying his hardest not to jostle Emma. She hadn’t let go of her tight grip on his shirt. They entered the library and were greeted by silence, broken only by the sounds of pages turning from the librarian’s stand. Emma avoided eye contact with the sparse staff as Paul carried her to the back of the floor and set her down on an old chair in a reading nook. 

“Where are those painkillers?” She spoke through gritted teeth as Paul knelt down and dug through the bag. He pulled out a bottle and set it in her hand and continued to pull out gauze, tape, and some disinfectant. Emma downed a few as Paul elevated her leg on his shoulder. “Alright, let’s get this shit over with.” she gripped the armrests of the chair tightly as Paul began undoing her bandages. She looked away from her leg as soon as she saw the red seeping through the final layers, her breathing shallow.

“Okay, okay Emma, I’m gonna disinfect the wound, then I’m going to put some new bandages on it.” She could tell Paul was talking more for his benefit than her own, he must be so grossed out. She couldn’t help but tense up when she felt the cold disinfectant sting her thigh. 

“Is it bad? I don’t wanna look.” her voice was as soft as she could manage with the pain she was going through. He moved to the inside of her thighs to get the other side of her injury. She couldn’t even look down from the spot on the ceiling to see Paul’s reaction.

“Uh, well, it’s not bad?” His voice sounded as unconvincing as his words and Emma gripped the armrests even more tightly than before. “I’m not sure, I haven’t ever dealt with a rebar wound before. But the stitches are all still in place, so that’s a really good sign.” Emma heard him shuffling the contents of the bag around, and she saw stars when he began to put pressure on the wound to pat the two sides dry. She bit back a keening cry of pain. “You’re doing great, Emma. I just need to wrap it back up, and then you can rest, okay?” 

She nodded stiffly as he wound the gauze around her leg, trying to get it snug but not so tight it would cut off her circulation. He rubbed his free hand on her knee as he taped up the bindings and Emma fell back against the chair once Paul had finished. She let out her breaths in puffs, trying to focus her mind on something other than the pain while she waited for the painkillers to kick in. Paul was gathering up the bloody bandages and tossed them into a nearby trash can, then returned to her side. He sat on the floor, his back leaning against her chair.

“Paul?” Emma looked at the back of his head when she spoke, her eyes and limbs feeling heavy.

“Hmm?” He tilted his head back, waiting patiently.

“M’ tired.” She held back a yawn. “If I fall asleep, can you stay awake?”

Emma could hear his relieved sigh. “Yes, you can sleep, I’ll keep watch and make sure no one comes for us.” She hummed something noncommittally as she sank lower in the chair so her head could rest against the back. The painkillers finally worked and Emma slipped into a light sleep. 

 

Emma woke up to Paul shaking her shoulder lightly. She groaned and sat up, her eyes squinting against the golden sun shining through the window. She winced at the pain in her neck, but she was grateful that her leg seemed to feel better. She looked at Paul, who was now standing over her. 

“Paul? How long was I asleep?” She pushed herself up to a sitting position, rubbing her neck as she looked around their small nook. 

“A few hours. The library is closing now, a librarian just came around to tell me we had to leave.” He grabbed the bag, which had been packed back up while she slept. Emma instantly felt guilty; she hadn’t meant to sleep for so long. Paul looked exhausted, with deep circles under his eyes. “I’ve got everything ready to go, I was thinking we could hide out in a grocery store or a McDonalds or something, then in the morning we can go to a bank and get enough money to buy bus tickets.”

“Sounds like the best option.” She stood up as fast as she could, and Paul handed her the cane she had grabbed, thankfully not the one Paul had used to fend off an alien. The two of them made their way to the front of the library, the process much faster now that Emma had had some time off her leg. They walked down the steps, back into downtown Clivesdale. The sounds of traffic were muted, as if it was somewhere in the distance. Emma looked up and down the street to see no cars in either direction. Weird.

“Okay, did you look up directions to a grocery store?” She turned to face Paul, leaning against the cane. “We’ll want to get there before the sun sets, the Infected people will probably want to move faster at night.”

“Well, uh, the thing about that is…” Paul trailed off, tugging at his tie. After seeing Emma looking at him with raised eyebrows, he stuttered a bit more before finally spitting out “I don’t have my phone anymore.”

“What? What happened to your phone?” 

“Well, it might have gotten smashed when General McNamara threw it at the floor?” Emma couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. Paul broke into a nervous grin and moved closer to her. “But it’s fine, I’m sure Clivesdale has more than enough 24-hour places for us to crash for a night.”

“You won’t need to spend the night anywhere, Emma and Paul.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a few more chapters already completed, which is why I've been able to post once a day, but I'll soon be running out of premade content for you guys and you'll be reading at the pace I write. But currently, I'm at a crossroads in the plot! So, without giving anything away, would you guys like to see-  
> A) continuing to explore Paul and Emma's run from the Hive with OCs being introduced to help them combat the apotheosis  
> B) the re-introduction of some of the Hatchetfield residents we know from the show (I'll have to break some of the plot points of the show in order to do what I have planned for this option)   
> I want this story to be as much as my baby as it can be yours, so feedback and input are vital to my writing process in a long story like this one! Feel free to leave comments, kudos, and suggestions!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the run again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I hadn't had time to post! I work two jobs currently and both picked up a bit this week.
> 
> !!!Slight TW for vomit!!!

“You won’t need to spend the night anywhere, Emma and Paul.”

Both of their smiles froze on their faces at the sound of the third voice. Emma turned around and her blood ran cold at the sight. 

“Professor Hidgens?” Paul’s voice sounded behind her, and Emma was frozen. The professor was standing tall, his eyes trained on the two of them. He smirked, God he used to smile like that when a student would answer a question correctly in lecture. 

“You better believe it.” Emma shuddered; the sound of Hidgen’s Hive voice was unnerving. “You don’t need to go anywhere, because the Hive will take you home.” He strode towards them as gracefully as he had in his bunker, and Emma stumbled back within Paul’s reach, adrenaline coursing through her. The professor turned his attention to Emma, his expression turning softer. “Don’t you want to go home, Emma? We can all be together, and we can all be happy”

Emma shook her head, but no words came out. If it were any other Infected person from Hatchetfield, she would have told them to fuck off and beat them with her cane. But she can’t with Hidgens. He had been her biology professor for nearly a year, he was the only biology professor at the community college that also had knowledge in botany so she had signed up for as many classes of his as she could. She had gone to his house once every other week to deliver groceries and help keep him from sitting at home alone. They had dinner together once a week to give each other company, he was important to her and she knew she was more than a student for him. To see him as part of the Hive, trying to convince her he was happy… she can’t even speak.

“Yeah, no way in hell will we be joining you.” Paul answered for her, and Hidgens face twisted into a furious expression. The professor glared at the other man and snarled out his reply.

“It’s no use fighting back now, the Hive knows I’m with you and they’re coming after you. They had hoped that you would come quietly if I showed you that we were no threat, but now we see that we have to use drastic measures.” He practically growled at the two, and suddenly something slimy and blue began to drip from his mouth.

“Holy shit!” Emma scrambled for a second, seeing Hidgens like that sent her springing into action. “Paul, we have to go, we have to run!”

The two took off in the opposite direction of the professor, rounding the corner and taking off down the main street of downtown Clivesdale. As they ran, Emma glanced behind her. Hidgens was following them, but he was far behind. Paul rounded the corner again onto a different street, and Emma followed. Hidgens was left behind nearly half a block behind them and as they continued moving they heard his tenor voice begin a song. Shit. He was calling them all here. 

“Fuck, they’re all gonna start hunting us down!” Emma picked up her pace as best that she could, wishing that she had put on that damn seatbelt so she wouldn’t need a cane. As they continued down the new section of buildings, they came face to face with a huge hotel complex.

“Should we risk it?” Paul looked at her, the setting sun blurring his features as Emma squinted to see him. They didn’t slow down, but they were certainly going to risk turning back to get inside if they didn’t decide. Emma nodded and moved towards the large glass doors of the hotel lobby. 

“We need to get in before they all see us!” She entered the building and hobbled her way across the plush carpeting of the front entrance. Paul went to follow her through the doors from the street but he froze. Emma saw his face fall and she dared to look out of the windows. 

Hidgens had rounded the corner, and somehow Zoey and Nora had joined him. They spotted Paul and began singing to him. Paul looked at her through the window. Emma shook her head violently, knowing that speaking would be suicide for both of them. Tears welled up in her eyes as he seemed to contemplate his two options; running off to keep them away from her, or coming with her to hide. She couldn’t bear to be separated from the medical supplies that he had on him, and more importantly, she wasn’t sure she could last more than the night without Paul with her. But in the few days she’s really known Paul, she learned he likes to be the hero when it comes down to it. And if he played the hero again and got himself really Infected, she’s not sure how long she’d last. She watched through the glass as the three Infected drew steadily closer and Paul was still standing there, dammit.

‘NO!’ she mouthed at him and, motioned for him to get his ass inside. Emma watched him take a deep breath before throwing himself inside of the hotel. He grabbed her arm and the two took off down the hall, hoping to find a working elevator. They reached the wall of elevator doors and Emma frantically pressed the button. The doors slid open leisurely and Emma pushed her way inside, slamming her finger on the top floor button while simultaneously dragging Paul inside. The doors slid shut just as they saw the glass doors swing open as Hidgens and the two other Infected entered the building. 

Neither dared to speak or relax yet, the elevator music playing softly as they rose to the top floor. Emma hadn’t listened to music besides the Infected’s signing since before the Apotheosis, and hearing music again made her feel on edge. The doors slid open with a soft ‘ding’ and the two stepped out onto more plush carpet. Emma turned left down the hallway and looked for a room close to the vending machines. 

“The vending machines?” Paul looked at her with a puzzled expression and Emma leaned on her cane to take some pressure off her bad leg.

“We don’t have any food now, and they know we’re in here somewhere. This might be the only food we get until we can get out of here.” She looked at the room door across from the machines. “Do you think we can break down the door? Or at least bust the lock?” 

“I can try.” Paul squared himself and tried to kick the door open. Nothing happened and Emma had to stifle a laugh at the confused face he pulled. “Hold on, I got this.” He tried a few more times and Emma turned to shatter the glass of the vending machines with her cane. She reached into the machines and grabbed as many snacks and drinks as she could hold.

After one particularly hard kick, Paul actually got the door open, a busted door chain being the only casualty to his attempts. He turned to her with a proud expression and she stifled a laugh as she walked into the room. Emma dumped the snacks on the desk in the room and picked up a bag of chips while Paul secured the door with the real lock, and after a second thought, he wedged the desk chair under the handle to keep the door closed as well. Paul crossed the room to look out of the windows, and a bark of laughter escaped his lips.

“They’re leaving!” He gestured for Emma to come to the window to see. She limped over to his side, trying to stay out of sight from the outside world. Sure enough, the same Infected people that had burst into the hotel lobby were dancing down the street, away from where they had come.

“Holy shit. We’re safe.” Emma sat down on the edge of the bed.

“For now, yeah.” Paul walked back to the desk and grabbed a granola bar and a water bottle. He sat down at the other corner of the bed, both thinking of something to say but not knowing what. 

“Hey, I-”

“Paul, I’m-” They both stopped as quickly as they began their sentences. Emma nervously laughed and brushed some hair behind her ear and fell quiet again. Paul nudged her leg with his own before standing.

“I’m gonna clean up in the bathroom, could you keep watch?” Emma nodded and watched him turn the corner to the bathroom and listened for the lock to click in place. And then she was alone with nothing but her thoughts and Paul in the next room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to leave kudos or comments! I love hearing from you all!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma's left alone with her thoughts; never a good thing, in her experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!!!TW FOR PANIC ATTACKS AND VOMITING!!!!!!!!!!!

Emma stood up after a minute of sitting in silence, the only noise being the shower running in the next room. She stumbled to the desk to grab something to drink, and as she went to grab a water, she spotted blue blood on her hands. It was dried and flaking, but the sight of it was a big enough shock to send her skittering back to the bed. Emma kept looking at it; where the hell did it come from? When did it get on her hands? She grabbed the bed sheet underneath her and began to frantically scrub at her hands. A groan of desperation left her lips as the scrubbing did nothing to get rid of the stains, and the more she tried the more she found that it was futile. Emma threw the sheet down with as much force as she could muster, her thoughts racing a mile a minute to try and fix the problem. It wasn’t until she felt herself slipping off the edge of the bed and onto the floor did she realize she was trembling and her breath was hitching. Holy shit, she was losing it.

She tried to steady herself, tried to grab at the bed to pull herself back up, but her brain wasn’t cooperating with her limbs. She just curled into herself, trying to block out the world. She was trapped in a hellish apocalypse, no one would save her. Emma pulled her knees to her chest, feeling the pain in her thigh as she did. She’d almost become one of them, she almost died-

Emma tried to drag in a breath, but she could only manage a stuttering gasp before feeling herself spiral. Her chest felt tight, her ears were ringing; where was she? She was in Clivesdale, because Hatchetfield was destroyed - it was gone, her life, her plans, was gone, gone gone gone-

She felt something touch her knee and she lurched back, hearing a yelp from somewhere in the room. Shit, she can’t see anything, her chest was being squeezed. She needs to breathe, breathe, breathe-

“Emma! Open your eyes, it’s okay, you’re safe, it’s okay!” Who the hell was speaking? She can’t see, she can’t breathe.

“Open your eyes, come on Emma, I know you can do it.” It was a nice voice, she may as well try. Emma opened her eyes to see the hotel room, not total darkness. Why was it blurry? She tried breathing as she blinked to try and make the room clearer. Emma looked around frantically for the source of the voice. She turned her head to see Paul sitting next to her, his hair wet and his hand on her knee. He must have been what she felt. 

“There we go, Emma. It’s okay, try to take a deep breath.” After a few failed attempts on her part, Paul scooted closer. “Can I touch you?” Emma gave him a jerky nod, he reached out to her and wiped at her cheeks, his fingers coming away shiny and wet. God, was she crying? She tried to breathe again but it got caught in her chest, a strangled cough triggering more. Emma leaned forward as she struggled to catch her breath from the coughing, this felt awful.

She could feel Paul lifting her into his arms and the next thing she knew, she was leaning her head into the toilet, feeling bile run up her throat. She couldn’t stop the tears even if she wanted to, everything that had happened in the last few days finally catching up to her. Bile turned into dry heaving, and by the time she finally slumped onto the bathroom floor she was totally spent. Emma pried her eyes open to see Paul standing at the sink, running something under the sink. She closed the lid to the toilet and propped herself up while Paul knelt down to her level, taking the wet towel and wiping her hands of the blue blood. He threw the stained towel away and grabbed another one, already wet, to dab at her face and mouth. 

“Thank you.” Emma’s voice was raspy and she cleared her throat, grabbing the towel to clean herself off. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what the fuck that was.”

“It’s okay.” Paul gave her a reassuring smile. “Why don’t we get some water? I forgot to drink mine earlier.” Emma nodded and hauled herself up and followed Paul back to the desk. He handed her a water bottle and a breakfast bar, grabbing the same for himself before sitting next to her on the bed, almost as if nothing had just happened.

“Paul, I’m sorry for interrupting your shower.” Emma kept her eyes trained on her water, avoiding looking at the man by taking a long drink.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, really-” He tried to comfort her but she cut him off.

“No, I’m serious. I’ve been taking up like all of your time and attention, and the second you get some space for yourself I melt down. I’m sorry. You deserve to think about yourself and not have to worry about me. I’m a thirty-two year old woman, I should take care of myself.” She chuckled weakly at her attempt of a joke, then took another drink of water. Paul shifted his weight, trying to think of the right thing to say.

“Emma, it's okay that you needed help. I do appreciate that you want to be independent and take care of yourself, but we’ve been through hell and back, and if we need to lean on each other to get through it, then we can do that.” Emma just nodded and nibbled at her breakfast bar, looking down at the floor. “Do you want to, uh, talk about it?”

“No.” The response was automatic and practiced, and Emma shut her eyes. Paul nodded slowly then stood. Emma snuck a glance at him as he moved around the bed, now realizing with embarrassment that he was only in his work slacks and his undershirt. And looking at with his back turned, she could admire his toned arms. He wasn’t jacked by any means, but Emma could tell that he worked out enough to keep fit. She averted her gaze the second he turned around, fiddling with the wrapper to her now nearly finished breakfast bar. 

“We should get some sleep, in case we need to be on the move tomorrow.” Paul drew back the covers. “Are you okay with, uh, you know-” He froze for a second, almost like he was rebooting; it made Emma crack a small smile. “I can make a pillow wall if you’re not.”  
“Paul, I am perfectly fine with sharing a bed with you. We’ve survived a fucking apocalypse, I think we can survive sleeping a few feet from each other.” Emma stood up and kicked off her crappy work flats, pulling her hair down and taking off her uniform tie in the process. She moved to the other side of the bed and crawled into the sheets while Paul rearranged the pillows on his side to his liking. They both settled into the bed easily and quickly fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a little shorter than usual! Hopefully I'll have more time to write this upcoming week and I'll be able to post some more. Feel free to leave kudos and comments!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things take an unexpected turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight tw for medical stuff! 
> 
> I've got an important note at the end, so please read!

Emma woke the next morning without having experienced any nightmares keeping her up all night. What did wake her up was the sunlight shining right in her damn eyes. She groaned loudly and threw her arm over her eyes. That was the best she had slept since Guatemala and she wanted to sleep longer. She rolled over in order to bury her face in the pillows and was met with a solid chest. Emma jerked away and her eyes snapped open, a blush quickly spreading on her cheeks. Paul was still asleep, but sometime during the night he must have gotten hot and taken off the shirt he had been wearing. She rolled back over, the space between them feeling much closer than before, and stared up at the ceiling. Well, shit, her heart was racing too fast to sleep now, so she might as well get up. 

She got to her feet and limped to the window, peering down on the street below. She couldn’t see any movement, and thank god for that. No Infected waiting for them outside of the hotel. But that also meant no regular people like them, running from the alien fuckers. God, do people even know that this is happening? That people are dying, aliens are real, and musicals are controlling the world? Did the Hive take all of Clivesdale and have moved on overnight?

A sharp pain in her thigh jerked her out of her thoughts. “Ah, fuck!” she tried to keep her voice down, but the pain got more intense when she turned to sit on the bed. “Oh, fuck, fuck!” She landed harshly on the bed and her hand flew out to smack Paul’s sleeping form.

“Wha?” He jerked awake, looking around with bleary eyes. Emma scrunched her face in pain as she twisted to face him. “Emma, what’s wrong?”

“It’s my fucking leg! I was just standing to look out the window and it started hurting like a motherfucker!” She grabbed the bedsheet beneath her like a lifeline as the pain rocked through her leg again. Paul scrambled to his feet and grabbed the medical bag. “Paul, what the hell is this?”

“Well, it could be your leg spasming, or just an indication that you should be resting.” Paul seemed to trail off as he unwrapped the bandages.

“Or?”

“Or it could mean your stitches are coming out before they should, or blood poisoning, or infection.” Emma hissed sharply as the bandages were lifted off the two wounds on her leg. She felt Paul shift away from her. “Oh, Emma.”

“What? What is it?” She opened one of her eyes to look down at Paul’s expression. It did not look good, his whole face was pinched. “Oh god, Paul, just tell me!” 

“Okay, uh, okay.” He ran his hand through his hair nervously “It looks like the stitches on the outside of your leg have started to come undone, and it’s starting to reopen that part of your injury.”

Emma took a deep breath and slumped against the bed. “Fuck” her voice broke. If her leg can’t heal, how the hell are they supposed to get out of Clivesdale? She’s gonna get them caught and killed.

“It’s okay, we can just go to the hospital again and find some more things to help!” Paul stood up and grabbed her cane for her. “I’m sure we can make it during the day, they do seem more violent at night.”

Emma looked up at him in disbelief, lifting herself to a sitting position. “Are you serious? We just spent the last day running away from the hospital and now you want us to go back there?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s like what you said yesterday.” Paul helped her to her feet and handed her her cane as Emma felt pain surge through her thigh again. “We can’t just wait around hiding somewhere until the Hive comes for us or we run out of food. We need to be able to get somewhere safe, and we won’t be able to do that if you lose your leg.” 

Emma gave him the side-eye as she limped across the room with her cane. She reached her shoes and slipped them on. After a moment she admitted defeat. “You’re too logical for your own good. Let’s go get something to help my goddamn leg.”

 

The walk back to the hospital was uneventful, which unnerved Emma to no end. Before they had left Paul had stuffed the snacks and drinks into their bag; they both knew that going back there wasn’t an option after they left. They moved slower than they had yesterday, Paul trying to let Emma walk as much as she could before they reverted to him carrying her most of the way, to her embarrassment. He had his cane out and ready, and Emma used hers as something to grip if the pain from her leg got too intense. They took a different route than the way they had come and wound up walking through a park. Emma and Paul stuck to the open paths to avoid any ambushes, and with the sound of the birds in the trees and some stream moving quickly over rocks this could have been almost a normal day. Emma scoffed at her own thought. No way in hell is any of this normal. An abandoned town ravaged by singing aliens is not normal. Her having a fucked up leg with stitches coming undone from running away from death was not normal. Maybe in another universe, she and Paul could have met under regular circumstances, like she screwed up his coffee order at Beanies or they ran into each other at a restaurant or something.

Life was not so kind to Emma as to grant her a normal adulthood. She had known that for a long time and it only rang more true with each passing day. 

The pair reached the hospital without much talking between them, both trying to listen for the sounds of singing or dancing. Paul stopped at the entrance, clearly nervous. He set her down then wrung his hands together, deciding on what to say. 

“Do you want me to lead the way, or…” He trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

“No, you should do it. I barely remember being in here, it was all hospital drugs and aliens.” She grinned at her bad joke then regretted it immediately after seeing the guilt flash across Paul’s face. “Hey, not your fault. You were trying to save me.”

“I know, I just…” He looked her up and down. “Wish this was different.”

“Fucking tell me about it.” She limped past him into the dark halls of the abandoned hospital. “Let’s go, computer boy.”

“Computer boy?” He called after her, catching up quickly. “You know my job was more than just sitting at a desk, right?”

Emma grinned playfully at him while she limped past a nurse’s station. “Sure, like my job was more than just making coffee and cold shitty pastries.” 

Paul smiled back, a much more genuine one that warmed Emma’s heart. “I did really like it there at CCRP Tech. It was easy and safe. Sometimes stressful, but never apocalypse-stressful.”

“I would say the same, but my stress levels are pretty much set at early morning rush during a solo shift at Beanies.” Paul laughed at that, and Emma peered through a doorway to hide her satisfied expression at the sound. “What are we looking for, exactly?” 

“You know, I’m not too sure.” Paul stopped and reached into his pocket reflexively. “Oh, shoot! Emma, can we use your phone to look up how to treat ripped stitches?”

She could have smacked herself for not thinking of doing that before. “God, yeah, sure! Aren’t we a pair of fucking idiots for not doing this before we left.” Emma leaned against the wall beside her, putting her cane next to her as well. She pulled out her phone and quickly searched what to do. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, she groaned and turned off her phone. “All the results say to go to the hospital to get it treated. Yeah, no shit, but what are we supposed to do when all the doctors have skipped town?” 

“Did it say anything about stitches coming out before they were supposed to?” Paul looked at her and leaned against the opposite wall. Emma shrugged and pulled out her phone again, searching up the new question. Only a minute later she found a workable answer. 

“Hell yeah! There are these things called steri-strips, they’re supposed to hold wounds together. If we can find some we’ll be golden.” She looked up at him from the article she had found. “You said my injury was opening again? Was it like all the way or just a little bit?”

“I didn’t really get a good look at it, but I couldn’t see anything too bad.” Paul looked a little queasy even thinking of the memory of her leg. Emma pushed her sympathy aside for a second; they can get the supplies they need, then she can worry about Paul.

“Great, then they’ll work. We should also see if there are any antibiotics in here, those will probably help.” She slipped her phone in her pocket and grabbed her cane again, pushing off from the wall in search of a closet. Paul moved ahead of her, checking each room for Infected before she could walk past them. They both felt an urgency in their movements; the air was thick with tension, like something was waiting to strike. 

At the end of the hall, a windowless door stood, the label “storage” bolted to the front. 

Emma turned to Paul. “Let’s hope this is it, I do not want to spend any more time here.” She grabbed the door handle as Paul grunted his agreement. The door opened without protest, and swung inwards to reveal exactly what they had been looking for; medical supplies. 

“Hell yeah!” Paul exclaimed and moved into the room. “You said they were called steri-strips?” 

“Yeah, they’re kinda small and- holy shit, Paul, look out!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the last chapter that I have completed, chapter eight is in the midst of being created right now. But my life is very busy between working two jobs and figuring out college and other life responsibilities. So I will post chapters as often as I can, but I am NOT abandoning the idea. The updates will just be less frequent. I wanted to let you all know! Feel free to leave kudos or comments because I very much appreciate those who follow this story and I love hearing from you all!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new yet familiar face is found in the hospital.

“Paul, look out!” Paul felt a heavy weight knock into his middle and he fell over into a shelf. Medical supplies rained down on him as he struggled to get his breath. He barely had time to come to his senses when he felt his chest being hit with something hard over and over again. Paul weakly covered his head with his arms in an attempt to protect himself, grunting in pain with each new blow that landed on him.

“Get the hell off of him!” he heard a scream, followed by the sound of struggling, as if a fight was happening. He opened his eyes to see Emma swinging her cane at his attacker. He couldn’t see much, the lights were still out from when the Infected cut the power. He could see the thing was fighting back, it looked like it was holding a bat of some kind. It was hard enough to tell with no lights, but his vision was also dotted with stars. He blinked a few times to clear them, just as the other figure swung their bat at Emma’s leg, sending her down with a sickening scream. Paul staggered to his feet and grabbed the first thing he could and blindly threw it at them. He watched the roll of gauze bounce harmlessly off the thing’s shoulder and cursed himself for not looking before he picked a weapon. 

“Hey! Not her, me!” He caught the thing’s attention, but instead of attacking him, they dropped the bat. Paul’s brow furrowed in confusion. Why would it not attack them anymore if that’s all the Infected are trying to do? 

“Paul?” A shaky voice came from the thing. He knew that voice. God, where were the lights when you needed them? “Is it really you?”

“Wait.” Paul shook his head as if to clear it. “Who are you? Step out into the hall.” The figure obeyed and backed out of the closet. Paul crouched down to help Emma into a sitting position. He could tell that she was holding back how much pain she was in, she was biting her lip and her eyes were shut tight. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders for a second before turning to the thing that was now outside in the hallway. The lights from the hall illuminated the thing and Paul drew in a quick breath in shock.

“Melissa?!” It could be no one else, the blazer, the glasses, the hair. She was unmistakable even if she looked like she hadn’t seen a mirror since the morning the Apotheosis started. The CCRP Technical secretary that Paul had known since she had been hired now had her hair tied up; her blazer was torn and there was dried blue stains on the shirt she was wearing. When he looked at her face, he saw the change in her eyes. The same change that he felt after he’d seen too many people die and too many aliens.

“Paul, how-?” Her voice trembled and her hands brushed her hair. “I mean, where-? Uh,”

“Melissa.” Paul made sure to keep his voice level. “I’m really happy to see you, but can you come help my friend Emma up so we can get her to a hospital bed?” The younger woman just stared at him, obviously in shock. “She’s very hurt right now and I need to be able to help her, can you help me?”

After a moment Melissa nodded. Together, they went back into the storage closet and pulled Emma to her feet. She seemed pretty out of it; her head rolled and her bad leg dragged behind her. The small group got Emma into a bed and Paul elevated her leg so he could remove the bandages on her thigh. Melissa seemed unfazed by the injury, even if it was looking worse. Half the stitches were undone on the outside of her thigh, but at least the inside injury was okay. Emma was very quiet while he was checking her out; if it was because she had a concussion or because she was scared, he couldn’t quite tell. Emma was hard to read a lot of the time.

“Okay, Melissa.” He finally spoke. He saw her jump at her name, like she hadn’t heard it in a long time. “I’m going to go get some medical supplies from the closet where we found each other. Can you stay with my friend Emma while I’m gone?” He waited until he saw her nod, her eyes trained on the door. Paul left the room quickly to get to the door at the end of the hall for the supplies they need. He sighed in frustration at the mess they had made in their brief struggle. Well now finding the steri-strips will be a lot harder. 

He dug around the shelves for what must have been five minutes before he found a small box with a label for steri-strips, and another couple minutes until he found more clean gauze and medical tape. On his way out, he spotted a blue stained bat on the floor. Must be Melissa’s, he thought to himself, I should get that. Paul picked up the bat and added it to the supplies in his arms. His hands trembled slightly has he held the objects, but after a few deep breaths it stopped. No need to be scared now Paul, he told himself. You just need to help Emma and figure out how Melissa got to Clivesdale. Then you can think about yourself.

On the way back to the room he decided to check the nurses station for antibiotics, just in case. He couldn’t find an after a few minutes and headed back to the room, a little disappointed but happy to have at least found enough supplies to try and fix Emma’s leg. When he reentered the room, he found the women in the exact same position that he left them. Melissa staring at the door intently and Emma laying in the hospital bed, eyes trained on the ceiling. Melissa stood up as soon as he walked in and grabbed the bat with a grateful smile. She silently helped him unwrap the new gauze while he figured out how to work the steri-strip wrappers.

“Okay, Emma, Melissa and I are going to try and pull out the broken stitches and put the steri-strips on instead.” Emma’s eyes rolled to look at him. The blankness in her stare sent a flash of concern through him. “Okay?”

“Yeah, m’kay.” She closed her eyes, her frown disappearing. Paul nudged her arm until she opened her eyes with a groan. “Pau, I wanna sleep.”

“You can sleep in a little bit, okay?” His worry grew as he spoke to her while he removed the broken stitches. Emma tensed every so often, but her lack of response to the pain she must be in was setting off alarm bells in Paul’s head. “Can you say hi to Melissa for me? She’s here to help you.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Her head lolled onto her other shoulder to look at the former secretary. Paul snorted out a quiet laugh at Emma’s bluntness; at least she hasn’t lost that. 

“I worked with Paul at CCRP Technical. I was a secretary.” The younger woman seemed to be thinking of things to say. “You worked at Beanies right?” She nodded quickly after Emma’s slower nod. “I went there a lot after work, I loved the chai tea you guys made.”

“Well, at least you didn’t drink the coffee. Our coffee was shit, right Paul?” She weakly hit his shoulder with the back of her hand and Paul chuckled in response to her attempt at a joke. Melissa cracked a small smile. They continued to talk about Beanies and CCRP Tech until Paul placed the last strip over Emma’s injury. Melissa helped him wrap the gauze back around her leg, and they taped up the loose ends. Emma rested her head against the pillows and shut her eyes again. 

“You can sleep for a while, but I’m gonna have to wake you up to make sure you’re okay.” Paul rested his hand in hers and she intertwined their fingers. After only a few moments Emma was asleep, her breathing deep and even. Paul and Melissa sat in silence for a few minutes; he was trying to collect his thoughts after everything that had happened today. Already Emma’s leg had gotten worse, they escaped back to where they started, and now Melissa was here with them. Wait, he never asked her how she got here.

“Melissa, how did you make it out of Hatchetfield?” He watched her take her eyes off the door and stare at her hands in her lap. “Last time I saw you, you were with Mr. Davidson.” 

Melissa let out a heartless laugh. “Yeah. After you ran out he called me into his office. I knew something was up because he never called me into his office, he always just talked to me over the phone.” She started to wring her hands together, her leg bouncing against the seat. “And when he started singing to me, blue stuff started to fall out of his mouth and his eyes and I didn’t know what to do so I just ran. I ran all the way back to my apartment, I didn’t know what to do, so I-” she cleared her throat and tugged at her ponytail. “I grabbed my bat and I got in the first car I saw. People were singing and dancing in the streets so I just drove. I made it across the bridge before Clivesdale lifted it up, and I was staying in that car until…” Paul watched her grip her bat tighter, probably out of habit. “They came across the bridge. I could hear them singing, so I tried to follow them. I thought that if I could take a few down before they got too close to the other side of town, I could at least save some people. But by the time I got to the hospital, they had already gotten to so many people.” 

Paul shuddered at the same time Melissa stifled a short sob. He remembers the rampage the Infected went on in the hospital. He just ran to Emma’s room as quick as he could, but he could hear the screams of the dying patients in his memories. 

Melissa began speaking faster, as if she wanted to end the story as soon as she could. “I hid in an empty room and whenever an alien came in, I fought it off with my bat. I’ve been hiding in here since then. I thought you guys were more aliens.” Paul watched a blush creep over her cheeks. “Sorry for hitting you, by the way.” 

“Oh, no worries.” He awkwardly raised his hands. “If I were you I would’ve done the same thing.” 

“Are you okay? You must be hurt or something.” Melissa stands up and moves around the bed to him. “If you want, you can rest and I can keep watch.”

Paul was about to protest, but it was as if his body had heard the offer and accepted for him. The aches of the bat swings and a sudden headache set in quickly, coupled with fatigue from the stressful events of the day. “You know, Melissa, that would be great. Uh, feel free to take any snacks or drinks from my bag, I can’t imagine the hospital has good food.” He grabbed a water from the bag and tilted it towards the woman, who grabbed some food with a soft thank you. He pulled out some of the painkillers Emma had been using a took a few from his own aches and pains then settled into a chair. “Be sure to nudge Emma awake in a few minutes, and wake me up when you start to get tired, I wouldn’t want you to exhaust yourself trying to be lookout.”

Melissa nodded and settled herself on a chair beside the bed that faced the door. She rested her bat against the side of the chair, and the last thing Paul saw before drifting off was Emma rolling over in her sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay between chapters! Chapter 9 is in the works currently and I’ll get it out as soon as I can! Feel free to leave kudos and comments!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens at Clivesdale hospital when no Infected are hunting you down?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I'm finally back with another chapter! This one is a little different in the formatting, I hope you all like it!

A few weeks had passed since Paul and Emma had run into Melissa in the Clivesdale hospital, and things had remained relatively quiet. From what Emma could tell, the Infected had moved on from the hospital to terrorize other parts of the city, leaving the three of them to themselves. Finally with time to rest, Emma’s leg had begun to properly heal and she was well on her way to being completely recovered. Paul helped her continue to strengthen it by walking around the floor, and Melissa taught her stretches to do in case her leg cramped. 

She never thought that some jumpy secretary would survive the apocalypse, let alone be an asset to them, but Melissa had been a huge help to her and Paul. She had taught them both how to actually swing their canes; Paul thanked her endlessly and she went red in the face as he told Emma stories of her softball league. Melissa was always the first to offer to sit watch, letting Paul and Emma sleep for a few hours in peace. Emma appreciated that act alone more than Melissa could know; she had begun to worry about Paul not taking care of himself and knowing that he was getting as much rest as she was eased her mind. 

The only danger they had been putting themselves in were the trips outside of the hospital for food. Paul had gone down to the cafeteria to see if the fridges or freezers had any food left, but found nothing but melted and spoiled food; they figured that when the Infected cut the lights they had to have cut the power to everything else. So trips outside to nearby shops for food and drinks were necessary. Emma had suggested taking turns leaving to get the supplies they needed, but her idea was quickly shot down by Paul. She was about to fire back a sharp retort, but one look at Melissa stopped her in her tracks. The younger woman looked a wreck at the idea of splitting up, her leg was bouncing so fast it looked like it was about to give way. So Emma took it back and vowed that they would travel together if they left the hospital.

The trips were silent and tense; no one ever tried to make conversation when they were straining to hear any singing or dancing. Melissa led the way with Paul bringing up the rear, their weapons gripped tightly while Emma hauled the bag of supplies between stores. She found it annoying that they never let her lead the way or help protect them, but at the same time she did understand that until her leg was fully functional she was pretty useless. They grabbed as much as they could carry each trip and always moved to a different room in the hospital afterward to avoid detection by any Infected. That was insisted upon by Melissa; after several horror stories of coming back to her hiding place to find her supplies ruined by an Infected Paul and Emma agreed. 

The three of them had settled into a quiet sort of routine in the weeks of living in the abandoned hospital. When the sun rose, they would eat something small and Melissa would lead Emma through leg stretches while Paul did a sweep of the floor they were staying on. Sometimes Paul would join them if he finished up before Emma could, then the three of them would take inventory of the food, drinks, and supplies they had stored in their room. By the second week, they had added a second bag to their collection solely for medical supplies in case anything were to happen to their safety in the hospital. During this time, Emma would get her leg checked on by Paul, and they dealt with any issues regarding injuries for any of them after inventory. In case anything were to run low, a trip would be made through downtown Clivesdale to raid shops and restaurants; but most days the day would be spent working out. 

Being confined to a building without any electricity became boring very quickly, and Melissa and Emma’s phones had died quickly and become useless. So they turned to exercise to keep themselves occupied and to keep themselves from falling victim to a passing Infected. Emma hated the workouts at first, but after a week or two she began really enjoying the feeling of being stronger and more flexible than she had ever felt before, even with her bad leg. After the workouts, the three of them would eat again and rest. They would talk a lot during this time, and watch out of the windows to look for any Infected movements in the streets. The rest of the day would be spent doing things to keep busy before they settled down for the night, taking shifts keeping watch. Paul paced the floor they stayed on, taking Emma with him occasionally for walks to stretch her bad leg. Melissa would disappear for a while, but was always back at sunset. When she didn’t walk with Paul, Emma would sit on the hospital bed and write. She wrote down everything she could remember about the Apotheosis; everything from how quickly the infection spread to the notes she could remember from Hidgens lab; she even wrote down the way they spoke and walked when not singing and dancing. When the sun set, she would stop where she was and hid the notes in the bedside drawers, leaving them for someone to hopefully find them. 

In the weeks inside the Clivesdale hospital, Emma found herself sharing more about herself to relative strangers than she ever thought she could. She told Melissa the story about Jane and Guatemala, she even shared theater stories from when she was in Brigadoon. Paul listened to her stories and supplied a lot of his own about his time with Bill in college, and maybe exaggerated tales about Ted getting too drunk at bar nights and creating his own karaoke night. Emma found that Melissa didn’t talk much about her family; she focused on her softball league. She had apparently played in high school and college, and wound up at CCRP Tech because she didn’t get picked up for a major team and had nothing to fall back on but her business degree that she had no idea how to use. Paul told his own CCRP Tech story; he had been attempting an actuarial degree but fell short when it came to the exams; so he finished college with a mathematical degree and ended up working spreadsheets. 

Emma never thought that she would like Melissa, but the younger woman had really grown on her. Their morning stretches were really nice, and the secretary was very smart when it came to knowing limits during their workouts. She was also incredibly sweet, if not a little jumpy and paranoid. Then again, who wasn’t after musical zombies destroyed your life. Melissa would refuse to tell them where she goes before sunset, and she never dropped her bat, even when she was sleeping. Melissa would still jump when Emma or Paul would say her name too quickly or speak too loudly; Emma tried to avoid doing so as much as she could. It’s not like Emma and Paul were doing much better at dealing with the apocalypse, so who was she to judge. Emma still had panic attacks when she saw blue blood, and Paul had horrible nightmares that would wake all of them up from the screaming. But they simply moved on; there wasn’t time to deal with how fucked up they were.

Emma woke up on the twenty-fourth day of being in the hospital to the normal routine; a quick breakfast, morning stretches, then they began inventory. 

“We’re running low on the steri-strips and disinfectant.” Melissa set the containers aside as she packed everything else away.

“And we’re out of water and very low on food.” Emma tipped the bag upside down and let the few power bars and bags of nuts fall out. 

“Okay,” Paul nodded, writing down the supplies on a piece of paper. “We can go out to that grocery store we found a few blocks down and raid that, then on our way to a new room we can pick up some more medical supplies. Sound good?” He looked to nods from both women. “Great! Okay, so, uh, before we do that, let’s check on your leg, Emma.”

Emma stood up and hopped onto the bed, helping Paul unwrap her bandages. She could finally stand to look at the injury now it was mostly healed, and she helped Paul take a look at the stitches. “It’s looking a lot better, right? There’s no swelling anymore and the skin looks like normal.”

“Yeah, it does look really good!” Paul caught Emma’s eye as he grabbed some disinfectant and smiled encouragingly. “We might be able to try and remove the rest of the actual stitches soon. I just hope I won’t fuck it up.” Emma smirked at his language; he must have been picking it up from her. He looked at her again and their eyes locked on each other; Emma could feel her heart start racing and watched Paul’s face flush. She was about to shoot back a witty remark, but a third voice shattered the moment.

“Why don’t we try to do that tonight after we get back?” Melissa was looking out of the window, oblivious to what was happening with Paul and Emma. Paul looked away quickly, turning even redder. “Last time we were out it was nearly sunset by the time we got back, it was too close a call.” 

Emma cleared her throat and nodded. “That’s a good idea, Melissa, we’ll go out, rob some stores, pick up our shit, and get back before sunset.” 

“Alright, let me just help Emma rewrap her leg and we can be on our way.” Melissa nodded and began gathering up everything in the bags while Paul ran the disinfectant over Emma’s injuries. The brunette stifled a gasp as Paul ran the wipe over the injury on the inside of her thigh and a soft blush grew on her cheeks. She knew she was capable of doing at least that part on her own, but who was she to stop Paul? Maybe she just wanted to indulge herself a little bit. 

They quickly packed up and left their room. Melissa held her bat at her side as she led the way, Emma with the two bags slung on her back following after her and Paul bringing up the rear with his cane. The walk through the streets of downtown Clivesdale was suspiciously quiet, and the tension between the three increased with every minute they were out in the open.

They reached the store a few blocks down. Melissa kicked open the door and did a sweep of the store while Emma and Paul stood guard outside. Emma and pulled out her can from one of the bags; she hadn’t needed it to walk in about a week so she had been using it solely as a weapon. Two bangs sounded in the store, and after a few seconds another rang out. It was a system Melissa set up to give an all clear and it sure as hell worked a lot better than yelling back and forth and bringing attention to themselves. Paul moved away from the door and let Emma slip inside. He stood keeping watch while the women grabbed food and supplies they couldn’t find in the hospital. Melissa was in charge of grabbing food and drinks; she always grabbed water and power bars, but today she was raiding nuts and beef jerky from the displays. Emma watched from the corner of her eye with relief and excitement; she has been so damn sick of power bars. 

Emma busied herself grabbing regular band-aids and other odds and ends she thought would be useful to have. She snuck a few pens into the bag and found some receipt paper as well; she didn’t know if the next room they stayed in would have any paper for her to write with. She also grabbed some phone chargers just in case and some matches and flashlights.

Emma was about to hop behind the register to grab what cash was in there, she had been collecting money in case they ever decided to make a break for it out of Clivesdale and head somewhere else, but she froze at the sound of a crash on the other side of the store. She banged her cane against the register twice, a question waiting for a response. Before she heard Melissa’s bat responding, she heard an ear-piercing note ringing through the store followed by Melissa’s voice louder than she’d ever heard it before. 

“Emma, RUN!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! I certainly wasn't sure where I was going with this until the chapter was done, I just kinda let the story take me. I also felt like this was moving too slow, ya feel? I wanted to speed through some time without changing my writing style and the characters too much. Feel free to leave kudos and comments, I can't wait to hear from you guys!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some gore and panic attack!!!

“Emma, RUN!” The second she heard the voice, Emma grabbed her cane out of the bag she was holding and ran towards Melissa’s shout. She rounded the corner by the fridges and was met with the backs of three people, two with blue bullet holes right through them. Between the people she could see Melissa swinging her bat defensively in front of her, and Emma could see the terror in her eyes. Emma raised her cane and cracked it over one of the Infected’s head. The Infected turned around to face her, and Emma retched at the sight. It had blue goo running down its chin, and the bullet hole was even bigger in the front. But what sent adrenaline pumping through her was the lifelessness in its eyes. She swung wildly again, aiming for the head, but the Infected grabbed the cane out of her hands and tossed it aside.

Fuck.

Emma looked around wildly for something to use as a weapon. The Infected started moving closer to her, and opened its mouth to sing some horrible song that got the other’s attention. Emma felt her chest tighten at the sound; oh god, she can’t have a panic attack now, she has to fight these goddamn aliens. The other two Infected turned around and started towards her as well, and Emma stumbled backward back down the aisle. She tried to look around them to find Melissa, but the three Infected started a loud song with wailing harmonies and Emma couldn’t focus. It was like her brain and her body weren’t working together. She heard herself scream, and she saw herself sprinting down the aisle, and definitely felt herself slamming into the different stands on her way out of the building, but her mind wasn’t telling her to do any of that. She was screaming at herself to help Melissa, tell Paul, stick together. But her body just wasn’t listening.

Emma sprinted out of the door into the street, the song of the Infected still ringing in her ears. Her vision was blurring and she could feel her chest constricting; she had to run. She took off down the middle of the road, feeling the bag hit her back with a heavy thud with every step. Emma could hear something calling after her, saying her name. Or was it singing her name? Oh god, fuck, she had to move faster. 

Between two of the buildings she passed Emma spotted an alleyway lined with trash cans and dumpsters. Plenty of places to hide from singing zombie alien fuckers. She darted down the alley and dove into a small space between a few dumpsters. Emma folded herself up into the smallest space possible, tucking her head between her knees and wrapping her arms around her legs. She tried to slow her breathing so she could listen for footsteps, but between her pounding heart and her mind going a million miles an hour she wouldn’t have been able to hear footsteps unless they were an elephant’s.

Emma felt her breath catch in her throat as her lungs constricted, and she sputtered out her next breath. She wheezed in another breath and felt hot tears trail down her cheeks. If she starts coughing like she did in the hotel, there’s no way that the Infected wouldn’t find her. She screwed her eyes shut and forced herself to slow her breathing. Just in and out, Emma, as soon as you can breathe like a normal fucking person you can get up and get back to the hospital.

Oh god, the hospital. Paul and Melissa. 

She’s a horrible, horrible coward.

 

Emma wasn’t sure how long she sat there, curled up between garbage dumpsters, but the sound of footsteps shocked her out of her stupor. She raised her head, curling herself in tighter. She shifted her weight to lean back against the alley wall and accidentally knocked over a box of empty bottles, sending them crashing down and rolling into the alley. She heard the footsteps stop, then pick up again, moving a lot faster. Emma whimpered quietly and scrambled back into the wall, hands reaching for one of the bottles to defend herself.

Oh god, she's gonna get fucking mauled.

“Emma?!” A voice called out, the footsteps coming to stop. Emma looked up from her bottle and found herself face to face with Paul, cane in hand. She can’t even imagine how she looked to him, sitting in garbage in clothes she’d been wearing for a month. He just kept staring at her, then he offered her his hand. She took it shakily, and he helped her out of her hiding place. “We should get back to Melissa, she’s down the street. We’re going to set up in an office building we found unlocked when we were looking for you.” Emma readjusted the bag she was in charge of carrying and nodded, looking down at her shitty work shoes. She wordlessly followed Paul out of the alley and down the street to Melissa. 

She couldn’t bear to look the secretary in the eye.

The office building wasn’t much to look at, a blessing compared to the conspicuous hospital they had been staying in. Melissa led the way to the third floor, the highest point for the building. It was just rows of desks grouped together, with old carpeting covering the floor. Thankfully, the electricity worked in this building, so lights and fridges worked like a charm. Emma busied herself tucking water bottles from Melissa’s bag into the fridge and freezer. As she went to close the door of the freezer, Paul’s movement on the other side of the office floor caught her eye. He was standing with Melissa, both their backs to her. Another wave of guilt and shame rocked through her; at least the seventh time it had happened since she had run away from them that morning. 

She felt absolutely horrible, but how the hell was she supposed to tell them why she did what she did? She can’t even figure it out; her body just ran, her brain didn’t realize what was going on until she was in the alley crying and trying to breathe. Even if she doesn’t know how to say how sorry she was, she knew that Paul could find it in his heart to forgive her. He was that kind of guy, always ready to see the best in people who weren’t into musical theater or bugging him for money. But Melissa was another matter entirely. The secretary had made it very clear that she hated the thought of splitting up, more by her actions than her words. And Emma had supported her on that front.

Except when she didn’t. And that killed her inside.

Emma finished up storing the food away in the office kitchen, and throwing away all of the spoiled food and drinks in the garbage. She wiped her hands on her stupid work shorts and walked across the floor to the other two.

“Hey.” The other two turned around to look at her. “I, uh, put away all the food and drinks and stuff in the fridge. Good news, the water runs so I made some ice.”

Melissa gave her a half-hearted smile and walked past her, moving to the restrooms. Emma looked at Paul for an explanation, but he just shrugged, as confused as she was. 

“I’m not sure what’s up with her, she’s been way more quiet than usual since this morning.”

Emma sighed. “I need to talk to her, I feel like an ass.”

“Yeah, you kinda were today.” Emma looked up at him in shock. “You ran off and left us with three Infected to fight off. I mean, we did okay, they’re all dead, but…” He ran a hand through his hair. “Emma, why did you do it?”

Ah, the question she’d been dreading. “Paul, I don’t know. They started singing, and I guess I just freaked.”

“You screamed bloody murder then left Melissa on her own! If you hadn’t have run out of there and nearly knocked me over she’d probably be dead because of you!” 

“God, you don’t think I know that?” Emma's voice came out breathy, almost like she was laughing. “You don’t think I spent the entire time I was in that alley feeling like I just killed both of you, and hating myself for being such a fucking coward?! I didn’t realize that my body was running until I was out of the store, and my mind was telling me what I was doing was wrong. But if you’re looking for some grand explanation or some dark reason behind why I left you both there… I don’t have one. I guess my survival instincts kicked in and I couldn’t stop them. But I spent that entire time in that alley thinking you both were dead, and that it was my fault.” Her voice rose with her intensity and fell sharply, tears welling in her eyes as she tried to contain her emotions. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Paul. I can’t excuse what I did, because it was a real dick move, and I know it’ll be a long time before I can prove to you that I regret it. But I have to go apologize to Melissa, excuse me.”

Emma pushed past Paul, wiping at her eyes furiously. She ignored the holes he was definitely boring into her head as she walked across the office space to the restrooms. Emma took a deep breath and knocked gently on the door. She leaned against the door, trying to listen for movement. All she could hear was the sink running. She waited a few moments before knocking again, hearing the sink turn off quietly. Emma straightened up as the door swung open, revealing the disheveled secretary. Emma’s eyes softened and her guilt swelled in her chest.

“Mel…”

“Emma, I-” She cut the short woman off as soon as she spoke, her hand running through her hair. “I understand. Well, really I don’t, but I know what fear can do to a person’s judgment. I swung a bat at you the first time we met, and nearly ruined your leg for good. It’s not always in your control, and I think the Infected screwed you up. And you can’t help that.” Emma stood in front of her, speechless. She wasn’t sure how to respond, or even if she should. She could hear the hurt in Melissa’s voice, and knew that no amount of apologizing would do her any justice. Before Emma could open her mouth again, Melissa continued. “I heard you, out there with Paul. I know he’ll forgive you by tomorrow, if he hasn’t already. That’s the kind of guy Paul is; he forgives, if he really loves the person.”

Emma smiled softly. “Yeah, he’s a great guy.” Her eyes widened. “Wait, what? Did you say love?”

Melissa laughed, her eyes lighting up and her smile spreading across her face. She shook her hair and moved past Emma, sending the barista following after her whispering hushed questions and friendly threats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for leaving you guys hanging with that cliffhanger for so long! I ended up pet sitting for a friend and going to the beach, so writing got pushed a little behind. But I hope that was a satisfying ending, let me know what you thought! Feel free to leave kudos and comments, I love hearing from all of you!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life can hardly settle back to normal, but dammit, Emma was going to try.

Emma tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep on the rough carpet of the office floor. They had decided that everyone would sleep tonight, because they doubted that any of them would sleep deeply. Well, we all guessed correctly, because Emma couldn’t fucking sleep. She had tried the chairs before settling down, but they were just as uncomfortable as the floor. She sighed and rolled onto her back, staring up at the dark ceiling. Paul hadn’t talked to her all night, after they had their stupid fucking fight he’d avoided even looking her in the eye. Emma just wanted things to go back to normal, or as normal as they were before she was an idiot and fucked things up. At least Melissa was okay with her again; she had a feeling that the secretary wasn’t nearly as betrayed by the incident. God, she wants Paul to just see that it was an accident, it didn’t mean that she was a stupid coward.

The sound of sniffling caught Emma’s attention, and she sat up, trying to see where it was coming from. She squinted into the darkness, and saw the space where Paul had settled down moving around. He was making distressed noises and rolling around in his sleep, and Emma felt her stomach swoop in concern. She crawled her way over to him, her bag leg protesting a little as she leaned her weight on it. The second she laid a hand on him, Paul began to move more frantically, a cry of fear escaping him in his sleep. Emma recoiled back, not knowing what she can do. She sat back on her legs, trying to think of something to help him get out of the nightmare he was having, and settled on the first thing that popped into her mind.

She slapped the back of his head.

It worked. Paul’s eyes shot open and he took in a deep breath, falling back against the floor of the office building. He spent a few minutes just trying to catch his breath, looking around in the darkness like he was trying to remind himself where he was; Emma understood the feeling too well from her panic attacks. Emma rested her hand on his arm silently, and she felt him tense and shift to look at her. 

“Are you okay Paul?” She spoke softly, trying to keep her voice down so Melissa wouldn’t wake up. “It sounded like you were having a nightmare.”

“Uh, yeah.” His response came out in a huff, his blue eyes landing on her. “I was having a nightmare, yeah.”

“Do you…” She took her hand off his arm quickly, feeling awkward suddenly. “Do you want to talk about it?” Her question was greeted by silence, Paul’s arm leaving his side to throw it across his face. Emma shifted her weight onto her better leg, her thigh was beginning to ache from the weird position she was sitting in. Paul remained still, like he was trying to ignore her, and Emma felt hurt flash through her. She cleared her throat to make sure her voice wouldn’t break; no way in hell will she let him know she’s sad about him ignoring her. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m gonna try and go back to sleep.”  
“Wait.” Paul’s voice was muffled from behind his arm, but it made Emma stop in her tracks. He lifted his arm off his face and sat up, resting his hands behind him to prop himself up. “It was about Bill.”

“Bill?” Emma tried to keep her voice neutral, but the surprise slipped through. “Like, that guy from your work, Bill?”

“Yeah. Well, he was more than just a work colleague. Bill and I had been friends since college, we lived a couple doors down from each other and used to hide from our terrible roommates. I actually helped him out on his first date with his ex-wife. He was a nervous wreck, so I snuck into the restaurant that they were at and pretended that he had once saved my life. Mary was not happy with that story when I told it on as part of my best man speech, she had assumed that we had become friends after that night.” He smiled at the memory fondly, lost in a daze for a moment. “I helped them out when Alice was little too, before the divorce. Bill and I would take her out to dinner if Mary was in a mood or working late, I’d take her to the movies or to the park on weekends. Then Bill and Mary had their divorce, and Alice was in Clivesdale most of the time and I lost touch with her…” Emma couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but she heard his voice change, grow softer like he was trying to keep himself from crying.

“Paul…” She didn’t know what else to say, but reached out and rubbed his arms comfortingly.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you tonight. Or last night, whenever it was before you talked to Melissa. The nightmare I had, about Bill, reminded me that I have been no better than you dealing with the whole Apotheosis thing. I uh,” he paused, swallowing thickly. “I left Bill back at Hatchetfield High, I gave the Infected the gun that killed him.”

Emma glanced at him, wanting to say something to comfort him but coming up empty. She inched closer to his side, wrapping both her arms around one of his. His frame began to shake as his crying turned into sobbing, and Emma lowered him down back onto his back, leaning down with him. Paul curled into her, seeking comfort, and she cradled his head to her chest, shushing him every so often as she stroked his hair. Eventually, he fell back asleep pressed against Emma’s side, much calmer than he was before. Emma fell into a dreamless sleep not long after him, unaware that the first rays of dawn shining into the windows.

 

Emma groaned when she woke up again, her back aching from sleeping on the hard floor. She screwed her eyes shut tightly, trying to hold onto sleep as long as possible. For an office floor, it was awfully warm; it was almost like she had a blanket wrapped around her. Her eyes shot open in shock the second she felt the warmth wrap around her tighter, like something was holding her like she was a damn teddy bear. Emma tried to gather her bearings and her blurry morning vision was not helping. She blinked her eyes a few times and things finally cleared up. She saw the soft light coming in through the windows, and Melissa, grinning slyly at her from where she had spent the night. The former barista flushed bright red, sticking her tongue out at her. She leaned into the embrace for a few seconds longer, closing her eyes to soak in the comfort she was feeling. Then she opened her eyes again and carefully untangled herself from Paul’s grip.

Of course, as soon as she got up on her feet, Paul had also woken up. As he was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Emma turned to Melissa with a no-nonsense “don’t say a word” look that sent the secretary into a fit of giggles. She then mimed locking up her lips and throwing the key behind her, and Emma narrowed her eyes, causing Melissa to burst out into full laughs.

“Too loud.” The grumble came from Paul’s place on the floor, his eyes squinting against the morning light. Emma couldn’t stop the laugh bubbling up in her chest, the sight of Paul trying to wake up while being annoyed was too hilarious. He smiled sarcastically and stood up, stretching out while he yawned. “How long have you two been up?” 

“Emma just woke up, but I’ve been up for a while.” Melissa looked pointedly at the two of them for a moment, then walked over to the fridge to grab something to eat. “But now that we’re all up, we should eat something and start on our morning stretches.” She looked back at the two of them, seeing their incredulous expressions. “There’s no need to deviate from the schedule we made at the hospital. Besides, it’ll probably make us feel a little more normal.”

 

With only a little protest from Emma’s end, the group began the same routine that they had adopted at the hospital. Stretches, leg exercises, and more workouts. As Melissa led the workouts, she noticed something different going on between Emma and Paul. Whenever Emma started to lose her balance, Paul would catch her and help her right herself. Sometimes his hands would linger a bit longer than necessary, and Emma would steal glances at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Melissa just continued the workout and didn’t say anything, yet. She’ll just have to corner Emma about it when Paul goes to walk the lower floors.

The secretary gave Paul and Emma some space, giving the excuse of wanting to try and clean up in the bathroom while Paul went to check Emma’s leg. She shut the door tightly behind her and approached the mirror. Last night she could barely look at herself, she knew that if she had obsessed over how grimy her clothes were she would’ve been in the bathroom all night trying to fix it. Melissa grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and tried wiping up her face the best she could. She tried moving as quickly as possible, feeling uneasy being alone in the small room. The paper towels ripped constantly, and Melissa decided to start wetting her hair before she became too frustrated. Unfortunately, they hadn’t thought to try and steal any shampoo, so she had to settle for just running her hair under the sink and then finger combing it. She reveled in the feeling of water running over her scalp for just a second, then rushed through the rest of it to get back to Paul and Emma. A nagging sense of panic and paranoia overtook her and she burst through the door back onto the office floor, her red hair hanging limply off her shoulders.  
“Woah, Melissa, you okay?” Emma and Paul were looking at her, the short women moving a little closer to her. She must look crazy with her hair wet, she shouldn’t have done that.

“Yeah, fine.” She smiled at Emma and got a smile in return. Melissa jumped when Emma placed a hand on her arm, trying to be comforting, probably. The barista looked like she was about to say something but was cut off by several loud bangs echoing from the street. 

Before Melissa knew what was happening, Emma had pulled her down to the floor, yelling for Paul. More bangs started up again, getting louder and more frequent. Melissa lay on her stomach, holding her ears to try and block out the noise. It was too loud and disorienting, Emma was yelling, the bangs were loud, where was that pounding coming from? 

“Melissa!” She felt a hand shake her shoulder and she looked up. It was Paul. “We have to get to the bathroom, okay? We have to crawl!” Melissa nodded jerkily and began to crawl towards the bathroom. More bangs sounded from outside, it sounded like it was right outside of their building. Emma was already at the bathroom, holding the door open for Paul and Melissa to crawl through. As soon as they both made it inside, Emma let the door swing closed and pressed herself against it. Melissa curled up against the back wall, her hands pressed to her ears. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to block out the noise. All she could hear was her pounding heart and her rapid breathing. She hates loud noises.

Another loud bang resounded outside, but it sounded like the door to the office floor opening. Melissa jumped, her eyes shooting open. Emma was gripping Paul’s hand tightly with her own, her eyes trained on Melissa. All the secretary could do was look back at her as the sounds of booted feet grew closer to the door.

“Ma’am, three signs of human life on this floor!” A deep male voice shouted. Paul pulled Emma away from the door and gestured for Melissa to move to join them. She crawled over to Paul’s other side, squeezing into the corner. 

“Brace!” The door swung open quickly and three armed soldiers stormed the bathroom, aiming their guns at the group. Emma screamed, and Melissa buried her face into Paul’s shoulder.

“Hands up! Put your hands up!”

“Colonel, we found them!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for it taking so long to update! I hope you liked the little resolution, plus all the fun background and other character information and interaction! I wanted to talk a little about Bill and Alice, plus some Melissa POV for a bit there. Feel free to leave Kudos or comments, I'd love to hear feedback on this!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heroic rescue is glamorous until after it's happened.

The next few hours were a blur for Emma. The soldiers were a division of PIEP, led by Colonel Schaffer, the woman that had helped her before the Infected came to Clivesdale. She had explained to them that she had led the resistance fight that eventually forced the rest of the Infected out of the hospital. She had since been sweeping the city, trying to knock out as many Infected as she could. Her team had picked up the signs of struggle from the Infected that Paul and Melissa had fought and tracked them to the building. A few Infected were lingering around the building, and Schaffer’s men shot them down, which explained the noises. 

The soldiers hustled them out of the building and into an armored vehicle, barely giving them time to grab their bags. Melissa fought to keep her bat, literally clawing at some of the soldiers as they tried to wrestle it away from her. Emma was proud, smirking at the soldiers as they begrudgingly handed the bat back over. The group sat in the car in silence, sitting huddled together opposite the soldiers while Schaffer drove. Their guns were out, resting in their laps. An obvious threat. Emma huddled closer to Melissa and Paul.

They were blindfolded as they were led into the building. A precaution, Schaffer claimed. Emma called bullshit; they had been in a windowless, armored vehicle for god knows how long, and now they want to blindfold them? But she didn’t say anything and let them led her and Paul and Melissa into the base.

They walked through the building for several minutes, the soldiers pushing them along. Emma couldn’t help but think of how much Paul would hate this, he hates when people drag him around, and being blindfolded would not be helping. She shivered; the building was freezing cold and she was still wearing her shitty Beanies uniform. She could hear a door opening and she was jostled to the side, hands on her shoulders guiding her. Emma heard sounds of protest from Paul, then the door closed again. Only a few seconds went by before the blindfold was removed from her face, revealing a windowless dull gray room. There were three beds against one wall, and a small door on the opposite wall.

“That’s the bathroom. By the foot of the beds you’ll find some PIEP mandated casual clothes. Colonel Schaffer will drop by for the first round of testing in two hours.” One of the soldiers spoke quickly then exited the room, followed by the two others. As the door closed, Emma heard the unmistakable sound of a lock being turned. She walked over to the door and tested the handle - locked from the outside.

“Well, shit.” She chuckled nervously as she spoke, turning back to Melissa and Paul. They looked as nervous and uncomfortable as she felt. “I guess the hint to take a shower was pretty big, huh? They left us clothes and everything.” Her comment got Melissa to crack a smile and Paul to breathe a little harder out of his nose, a win in her book. “Who’s going first?”

 

Emma stood in the stream of water coming from the shower, her eyes closed as the water beat down on her sore body. She reveled in the way the water ran over her skin and soaked into her hair. She scrubbed and shaved until she felt like herself again, being careful around the barely healed wounds on her thigh. She saved washing out her hair for last, massaging her scalp and finger combing in conditioner, trying to enjoy the feeling of washing out the last month and a half. Eventually, Emma got the courage to shut off the water and step out of the shower. She dried off and changed into the PIEP clothes, which consisted of a lightweight grey sweater that was entirely too big for her and black pants of a similar material, again much too big. She sighed and used some of the hair ties she had used to keep her hair up and cinched the clothes so they wouldn’t slide off her body. She also had to roll the pant legs up so she could walk, and the ends of the sweater, much to her annoyance. As she made her way to the door, Emma paused to wipe the steam off the mirror to look at herself. With all of the grime cleared from her face, she really looked half-dead, with deep circles under her eyes and a lack of a healthy glow in her face. She couldn’t deny that all the working out she had been doing with Paul and Melissa had gotten her pretty toned, but beyond the muscle she could tell she was underweight. Emma sighed and wrapped her hair up in her towel, pushing the door open into the main room.

Paul and Melissa were sitting on the ends of two of the beds, Paul picking at his nails and Melissa braiding her hair nervously. They were dressed in the same clothes as her, and it was obvious that there was only one size issued for them. Paul looked ridiculous in the sweater that barely covered his stomach and pants that looked more like capris on his ungodly long legs, and Melissa was drowning in the sweater, staring longingly at her dirty blazer across the room. Emma walked over to her and offered her last hair tie to the secretary.

“Here, so your top doesn’t fall off. Guess they must not have a lot of visitors if all they have are one size fits all policies for clothes.” Melissa smiled gratefully and gathered as much of the excess material as she could in the hair tie. Emma turned to look at Paul and smiled. “I can’t do much for you though.” 

That was all it took to break the tension in the room. Melissa snorted and Paul laughed, looking down at himself.

“Yeah, I look ridiculous.” He plucked at the fabric of his sweater. “Maybe when Schaffer comes back we can ask for clothes that fit.”

“Maybe,” Melissa replied, looking around the plain room. “God, where do you think we are? We were in that car for a long time.”

“Beats me. And who blindfolds the people they save and lock them in their room?” Emma tried the handle again with no luck.

“People who don’t believe we’re actually survivors.” As soon as Paul spoke, the anxious energy they all felt before returned with a vengeance. Melissa’s smile fell and Emma instinctually wrapped her arms around her middle. “I mean, face it. They probably assume we’re highly functioning Infected, or at the very least that we have some sort of contamination. Why else would Schaffer do testing on us?”

A shiver ran up Emma’s spine at the word. Testing. She moved to the middle bed and sat down heavily, lost in her own thoughts. What does testing even mean? Are they going to take her blood and scan her brain or some other sciencey bullshit? She hates all that medical crap, she might punch a few scientists. Or maybe they’ll just grill them about what happened, or try to make them sing or something like that. They looked more FBI than sciencey, maybe the questions are the more realistic option. 

Emma’s head jerked up at the sound of the lock being turned and the door opening abruptly. Colonel Schaffer entered the room, followed by two men in lab coats and three PIEP soldiers. Emma stood up from the bed, wringing her hands together. She felt Melissa and Paul move on either side of her, but her eyes never left the PIEP agents. She didn’t trust them, something about Colonel Schaffer didn’t seem right.

“I’m glad you’re all settling in. I trust that the shower was a welcome change.” The Colonel looked at the pile of clothes on the other side of the room. “While the three of you are in testing, those clothes will be examined then incinerated, so if there are any personal effects in them, please let us know before the testing begins.” The woman looked at Melissa and Emma felt a surge of protectiveness rise through her. She grabbed the secretary’s hand and squeezed. 

“Miss, I know you wish to have that bat with you in the room, but since it has some of the blood of the invasive species we will need to take it to forensics and examine it. It will then be cleaned and returned to you.” The Colonel then looked up at all of them, a condescending tone slipping out. “That will also be the protocol for anything in the bags you brought with you. We need to ensure that no contamination can be spread to the base. Now, we will take each of you to your testing rooms and we can begin. It should only take a few hours, but-”

“Wait, a few hours? Testing rooms?” Emma spoke up, stepping forward slightly. “You’re splitting us up?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Schaffer looked down on her, and Emma narrowed her eyes. “To ensure that any of the lingering infection won’t attempt a takeover. Separation during testing will also ensure that any tests being run can be tailored to the individual.” 

Emma could feel Melissa’s grip on her hand tighten as Schaffer gave the order to blindfold them once more so they could be led to their testing rooms. Emma squeezed back until the soldiers began leading them out of the room, then their hands separated. She tried to steady her breathing as the soldier led her away, but she began to panic when the sounds of footsteps faded and all she could hear were her own and the soldier. She jumped at the sound of a heavy door being pushed open, and Emma was led through and guided into a cold chair. The door closed and a crackly voice came over a speaker.

“You may remove the blindfold now, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! I hope you liked this chapter, we're coming up on my favorite section of this story and I hope you're as excited to read it as I am writing it! In my plan, this story is half completed, but I have also given space in my plan to have a chapter per character about their testing in PIEP. Would anyone be interested in reading that? Let me know in the comments, and feel free to leave kudos and comments as well, I love being able to hear from you all!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul undergoes his first round of testing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mentions of panic attacks and intended violence

Paul shifted uncomfortably in the seat, looking around the blank room. The walls were cement gray, completely uniform, and the only things breaking up the grayness of the room were the chair he was sitting in, the metal table in front of him, and the beige speaker in the corner of the room.

“State your name, please.”

“Paul. Paul Matthews.” He leaned forward in his seat, as if that would help.

“And please explain how you were able to survive what has been dubbed the Apotheosis by officials at PIEP, which wiped out nearly the entire populations of Clivesdale and Hatchetfield. Spare no detail, please.”

Paul cleared his throat. “Oh! Uh, okay. It started the morning after the meteor crashed into the Starlight Theater.” He continued to explain the events of the first few days of the apotheosis, leaving out nothing, except for the conversation he had with Emma in the bunker. That felt too personal. He also decided to leave out the near kiss he had with her. He really doubted that PIEP would care about that.

“Can you please explain how you were able to travel with the Infected citizens from Hatchetfield to Clivesdale?” The speaker crackled slightly as the voice bled through.

“Oh, uh, yeah I was getting there.” Paul tugged at the neck of the too-tight sweater. “Uh, after I set off the grenade, I blacked out for a bit, and I woke up still in the theater. There were a bunch of Infected around, but they weren’t paying attention to me. It’s like they thought I was converted or dead or something. So I tried to sneak out, but I got stopped and asked where I was going.” Paul furrowed his brow, a headache was starting to form trying to remember everything. “The Infected don’t really talk, even when they aren’t dancing, it’s always a little bit of singing. So I tried to think as quickly as I could, and I came up with some pretty shitty lyrics. I told them that I should go find Emma and convert her, so I could try and escape with her.”

“And could you please identify Emma?”

“Oh! Okay, she’s uh, the shorter woman that’s with us, brown hair, really standoffish.”

“Noted. Please continue Mr. Matthews.”

“Okay, so uh, when I told them that, the Infected used their Hivemind to scan the island, and told me she wasn’t in Hatchetfield. So they decided to destroy the electrical workings on the bridge and made the bridge across the channel fall. Some of the Infected swam across the channel to Clivesdale, but most of them danced across the bridge. I followed them and tried to find Emma before something else got to her, but I…” He cleared his throat, feeling it tighten up at the memory. “I almost lost her.”

“Please explain, Mr. Matthews.”

“Uh, one of the Infected PIEP soldiers was in the room, pretending to be Colonel Schaffer. It was terrifying how well it was able to replicate speech, but I saw it catch my eye from the door and it must have thought I really was one of them, because it started talking about some guy named Ben Bridges would be leaving with Emma to Colorado. A bunch of other Infected were waiting outside of the door with me, and I was trying to come up with a way to get Emma away from them. Then the Infected soldier left the room and pushed me in. So I had to start singing to keep my cover.”

“And can you tell us what happened after that?”

“Yeah, uh, of course.” So Paul continued with the story of how they had been hiding out around downtown Clivesdale, meeting up with Melissa, and everything up until being recovered at the office building. After he stopped speaking, he waited for the go-ahead, that had to be it, he could leave now, right? The speaker crackled to life again after a long moment of waiting.

“Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Please remain seated while the doctors come in to take blood, hair, and skin samples to be tested.”

The heavy door creaked open and three or four doctors came into the room, welding syringes and bags. Paul tried to stay as still as possible as his blood was taken and his hair was tweezed, but he flinched at how close everyone was, and how they kept touching him. One of the doctors twisted his arm so he could get a skin sample from the back of his hand, and Paul stood up suddenly, ripping his arm out of the doctor’s grip. The group of doctors backed away quickly, making all sorts of warning sounds. The speaker crackled to life again and said something, but Paul couldn’t focus on it, all he could focus on was his shaking hands and heavy breathing. Anger built up in his head and suddenly all he wanted to do was knock the table over and get the doctors away from him. So that what he did.

Or at least, that’s what he tried to do. Before he got the chance to flip the table a doctor grabbed his arm and stuck something in it. Paul struggled against the doctor’s grip, but the other doctors restrained him down into the chair. His vision started to blur, and Paul began speaking frantically.

“Please stop touching me, where’s Emma and Melissa, let me go, I need to get to them, make sure they’re okay.”

“Set up a psychological exam for Mr. Matthews when he wakes up, we need to find out what affects him and what doesn’t now that he has come into contact with the Infected…”

 

Paul woke up, groaning. He blinked the blurriness from his eyes and looked around. It was the same room he was in earlier, why did he fall asleep? He goes to brush his hand through his hair, but is stopped by something keeping his arm down. Paul looks down and sees restraints binding his wrists to the chair. He pulls frantically at the straps and feels that his ankles had been bound to the chair legs.

“What the hell?” He looked right at the speaker, not knowing if the person speaking could see him or not. “What is this?”

“Just a precaution, Mr. Matthews. You gave the doctors quite a fright back there. You appear to be sensitive to touch, was that an issue before the Apotheosis?”

“What?! Why would you ask me that?! Shouldn't you just… I don’t know, not touch me like that ever again and just move on?” 

“Apologies Mr. Matthews, but we need to figure out what effects the Apotheosis can leave on the human psyche if we are ever to cure the Infected citizens. This means learning what tactics they have used to make people fear them. Please answer the question.”

Paul scoffed, not believing what he was hearing. “No one likes being crowded and touched by strangers, so yes, it was an issue before the Apotheosis.”

“Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Now, we will be playing a series of sound clips for you to see if anything will trigger a response from any of them. This will help determine the effect of the Apotheosis on uninfected citizens, and will hopefully lead us to find ways to combat the Infected citizens. Are you ready, Mr. Matthews?”

“Uh, sure.” Paul shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not having much room to do so.

“Alright, here is the first sound clip.”

 

 

Paul fell back against the chair, panting from exertion. His throat was raw and sore, and his wrists and ankles burned from straining against the bindings. Sweat had broken out on his brow, and his eyes were dazed and unfocused as he stared at the ceiling.

“Very good, Mr. Matthews. That was the last sound clip for the day. We will be setting up appointments with a therapist for you and your companions, but for now, you will be brought back to your room to rest. Enjoy your night, Mr. Matthews.”

Paul could barely move as the PIEP soldiers came in and unbound him from the chair, and he was practically dragged back through the corridors to the room. The soldiers dropped him on the nearest bed, not making a move to help him get the blindfold off his eyes.

“We’ll be back tomorrow for the next round of testing.” One of the soldiers spoke. A chuckle came from the other soldier before they spoke.

“Oh, and we’ll ask Colonel Schaffer for a different set of clothes for you, we heard that they don’t seem to be to your liking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, sorry this is at such an early time to be posting! Also I apologize in advance for the next couple chapters. But I'm very excited for the next couple chapters are focused on this aspect of the AU, PIEP is such an interesting concept and an unexplored facet of the Hatchetfield universe and I'm excited to explore it my way. Let me know what you thought, kudos and comments are very appreciated and welcomed!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Testing isn't fun for Melissa either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for panic attack

“State your name, miss.”

“Melissa.” She bounced her leg in the chair, anxious energy filling her as she eyed the speaker.

“Your full name, please.” The voice sounded annoyed, had she already messed everything up?

“Melissa Perri.”

“Thank you. And please explain how you were able to survive what has been dubbed the Apotheosis by officials at PIEP, which wiped out nearly the entire populations of Clivesdale and Hatchetfield. Spare no detail, please.”

Melissa brushed her hair behind her ear, feeling very exposed without her bat in hand like when she had told Paul her story. But she told it anyway, trying very hard not to cry like she did the first time, she had a feeling that they wouldn’t be kind like Paul was.

“So you were living in the hospital at the time that Mr. Paul Matthews and Ms. Emma Perkins were both attempting to find medical supplies?”

“Yes, I had been living in the hospital since the Infected had arrived in Clivesdale. When I heard footsteps pass by my room I thought that it was more aliens, so I followed them and ambushed them in a supply closet. I didn’t realize it was Paul until he had started speaking.” Her leg bounced faster.

“And then you all spent a month living in the hospital, until the aliens that PIEP had picked up on attacked the three of you and you relocated to the building in which you were recovered?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” Melissa began tugging at her hair, running her fingers through it roughly. She waited for the next question to come, but it didn’t. It was quiet. Did she answer wrong? Why weren’t they responding? Both her legs began shaking and she started tugging hard at the end of her ponytail. 

“Miss, did these habits develop after the events of the Apotheosis, or have these always been coping mechanisms?”

“What?” Melissa instantly freezes, her eyes darting around the room as if she could tell if someone was watching her.

“Your leg bouncing and hair-pulling. Did you do that before you drove to Clivesdale?”

“I- I don’t know. I was bouncing my legs?” She bit her lip, afraid that they would tell her to leave, and they’d make her be alone again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Miss Perri, we’re going to send in some doctors to take blood, skin, and hair samples to be tested, then we’ll move on to the psychological portion of the testing, alright?”

Melissa just nodded frantically, but her mind was racing. Psychological tests? Was there something wrong with her and they need to figure it out? Were they doing this to Emma and Paul? Probably not Paul, he was handling everything so well. She was yanked from her thoughts by the sound of the door opening with a loud squeak from the hinges; she was tempted to cover her ears but she didn’t want them to think there were even more things wrong with her. 

The second the doctors began touching her to take the samples, Melissa shut down. She didn’t move and was barely breathing until after the samples had been taken. But on the inside, she was unraveling. Her heart was hammering, and she had shut her eyes to stop the tears that were threatening to fall. She wasn’t sad; she was terrified. They were touching her and pricking her, and she didn’t like it and she wanted them to stop and leave her alone and take her back to the room with Paul and Emma-

“Miss Perri, thank you for your cooperation. Now we will be moving onto the psychological section of your testing. We will be playing a series of sound clips for you to see if anything will trigger a response from any of them. This will help determine the effect of the Apotheosis on uninfected citizens, and will hopefully lead us to find ways to combat the Infected citizens. Are you ready, Miss Perri?”

Melissa nodded, her leg already shaking. Without warning, loud music blared into the room. Melissa clapped her hands to her ears, whimpering. The beat seemed to grow louder, then a voice began to sing. She shot up out of her chair, diving under the table. She curled into a ball, rocking slightly as the song continued. Then the song abruptly cut off, and Melissa was left in a deafening silence. She moved to crawl out from under the table, then gunshots began to ring out in the room. She heard herself scream, and she knew she was yelling something, but her brain wasn’t in control anymore. It was too much, everything was too much.

 

“That was the last sound clip, Miss Perri, we are having escorts bring you back to your room. We will be setting up sessions with a PIEP therapist for you and your companions tomorrow, but for now your testing is done for the day. Enjoy your night, miss, and try to rest.”

Melissa was pressed against the back corner of the room, as far away from the speaker as possible. When the soldiers entered the room, one with a blindfold in hand, she began to shake violently. A whimper left her throat as they hauled her to her feet, and they practically dragged her back to the room. Her throat was raw, and when they removed her blindfold the soldiers left immediately. She hardly registered Paul collapsed on his bed as she ran into the bathroom, locking the door swiftly behind her. She turned on the shower water and tucked herself away in the corner between the toilet and the wall, wrapping her arms around her legs. She began to cry, the tears she had been holding back finally coming out. She pressed her knuckles to her lips to try and prevent any noises from coming out, but biting back the sobs were not helping her.

She sat in that tight corner until the steam completely fogged up the small mirror above the sink. Melissa shut off the water once she knew she wasn’t going to cry anymore, but she remained in the locked bathroom so she could try and look normal again. She patted cool water around her eyes and messed with her hair, but she stopped touching it when she remembered it was one of the things that the PIEP person wanted tested. She clutched her hand to her chest as if she had been burnt, and locked eyes with herself in the mirror. She looked tired and scared, not at all the person she remembered from before the Apotheosis. She was a joke of who she was before. 

“Melissa?” The voice on the other side of the door and the accompanied knocking sent the secretary into a flurry of action, straightening her clothes and wiping at her cheeks before she unlocked the door. She cracked it open to see Emma on the other side, and she flung the door open and grabbed her in a tight hug. Emma returned the hug with as much ferocity as she could manage, and began leading Melissa to her bed.

“That didn’t feel like testing.” The secretary finally spoke, her voice catching in her throat as she forced the words out. Emma sat down beside her, not breaking contact, and Melissa tucked herself into her side. “I felt like I was going to die.”

“It’s like we’re fucking lab rats to them, not people.” Emma’s voice held barely contained fury. “It’s disgusting.”

“Can we lay down?” Melissa looked up at the barista, who glanced down at her. She must have looked pathetic, because Emma gave her a small smile and nodded.

“Yeah, yeah we can lay down.” They eased their way onto the bed, Melissa still tucked into Emma’s side. She could hear the other woman’s heartbeat, and it started to settle her mind for the first time since waking up this morning in the office building.

“Please don’t leave me.” Melissa spoke quietly, almost hoping that Emma didn’t hear the words as soon as she spoke them. But she felt Emma begin to run her hand up and down her arm and she calmed down again.

“Promise I won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for putting you guys (and poor Melissa) through that! These 'testing' stories just poured out of me and before I knew what was happening, none of these characters were having a good time. Let me know what you guys thought, kudos and comments are welcomed and appreciated!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma Perkins? Being told what to do? Yeah, this is going to go great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for panic attack

“State your name.”

“Emma Perkins.” She could already feel anger overtaking the panic she had felt before; how dare they try and split them up for testing, fuckin PIEP doesn't know what they’ve been through, they would have been better off together to get the full story from all of them.

“Miss Perkins, we believe that you think you’ve made contact with PIEP before the events of this morning?”

“Uh, yeah, when I was at the Clivesdale hospital after my accident, some PIEP guy and Colonel Schaffer were helping me with relocation. I only met the Colonel once, but-”

“That is false information. You were in contact with a PIEP operative in previous encounters, but Colonel Schaffer did not arrive at this station until after the attack on the Clivesdale hospital. We have received word from Mr. Matthews that the person you were talking to beforehand was an Infected in disguise.”

Emma scoffed, leaning back in the chair. “Fucking great, that kinda explains it.”

The speaker was silent for a moment until it crackled back to life. “Alright, now that that has been cleared up, Miss Perkins, tell us how you have survived what has been dubbed the Apotheosis, and spare no detail.”

Emma rolled her eyes and began telling her story, purposefully leaving out the notes she had taken about the Apotheosis that were scattered throughout the different rooms in the Clivesdale hospital. She still had a nagging suspicion that PIEP can’t be trusted, and didn’t want them to get their hands on all of her information. She also left out any and all affection she felt towards Paul and Melissa; if they knew she cared for them, they’d use it against her.

“So your injury was never treated properly after Mr. Matthews recovered you in the Clivesdale hospital?”

“You mean that we didn’t find a doctor in a zombie-infested city while we were on the run and had to let my leg deal with our limited knowledge of injuries and a few google searches before my phone crapped out on me?” The sarcasm was dripping from Emma’s voice. “What a concept!”

“We will be sure to send a PIEP doctor to check out your leg after the testing is over for the day. Your health and safety are important for the understanding of the Apotheosis and our path to finding a cure for the infestation.”

Emma shifted uneasily in her seat. If that didn’t sound like some Big Brother shit, she wasn’t sure what does. “Thanks.”

“Now, Miss Perkins, we will be sending in some doctors to take a blood, skin, and hair sample for our further analysis, then we will begin our psychological portion of the testing.”

Before she could get a word in edgewise, the heavy door creaked open and several PIEP operatives in white coats entered the room, carrying trays with syringes and medical equipment in sanitary bags. She rolled her eyes and fidgeted while they took the samples, just wanting this to be over so she could get back to the room. God only knows how Paul and Melissa are handling all the questions and closeness.

One of the operatives took a look at the steri-strips covering the scar on her thigh, reaching out with his gloved hand to run a gloved finger along it.

“Hey!” Emma jerked her leg away from his reach, feeling very uncomfortable. The doctor mumbled something and stood up, leaving the room with the other operatives. She watched them go in disbelief and turned to the speaker as the door closed. “Are you kidding me with that?! Not cool!” 

“Apologies Miss Perkins, we’re simply curious how the injury healed without true medical help.”

“Still not okay for people to try and touch my leg without permission, that’s just rude.”

Emma heard someone clearing their throat through the speaker, then the voice returned. “Alright then, Miss Perkins, we will now begin the psychological testing. We will be playing a series of sound clips for you to see if anything will trigger a response from any of them. This will help determine the effect of the Apotheosis on uninfected citizens, and will hopefully lead us to find ways to combat the Infected citizens. Are you ready, Miss Perkins?”

“I fuckin guess so, let’s just get it over with so I can get back to that room, right?” Emma cracked a smile, but it’s hard to ease the tension in the room if you’re the only one in it.

“Here’s the first sound clip, Miss Perkins.” The voice was flat and unamused. A second later, a song began to pump through the speaker. Emma’s reaction was immediate; she screwed her eyes shut and gripped the armrests of her chair.

“Hah, really fucking funny.” Her voice was shaking as she spoke, hoping the voice on the other side of the speaker could hear. “But turn it off.”

The music didn’t stop, and Emma’s breath hitched in her chest. She was about to ask again, but a voice joined the music and she lost it. Emma shot out of her seat and ran to the door, pounding and screaming to be let out. She ran around the small room, slamming her hands against the wall. Her mind was cut off from her actions; it was like she was watching herself go crazy. By the time the clip ended, Emma was a crying mess in the corner, her hands cut up from grabbing at the walls and floor.

She didn’t even have time to compose herself before gunshots rang out. She screamed for a second, then crawled her way under the table, gripping the leg tightly. The sound clip didn’t seem to last as long as the last one, and something that sounded like squishing and tearing entered the room. Vivid flashbacks to the sounds made when Hidgens was turned and torn apart by Infected entered her mind, and she clamped her hands over her ears under the table, pleading for it to stop while she dug her nails in her scalp.

Then more singing voices started up, and Emma really lost it.

 

 

Emma was taken, kicking and screaming, to a doctors room to get her leg injuries checked out. She had her arms restrained on the examination table, and lost the will to fight while waiting for the doctor to finish his examination. She just felt uncomfortable and wanted to be with Paul and Melissa. It took a long time for the doctor to declare that the wounds were healing nicely and that there was nothing more for him to do than to watch for infection. She walked with the PIEP soldiers back to her room without protest, and removed her blindfold herself to see what appeared like an empty room.

Then Paul snored loudly from his bed.

Emma jumped at the sound, then relaxed when she realized that it was just Paul. She walked stiffly over to his bed and removed the blindfold from his eyes, smoothing down his hair. She then glanced around the room to get a better look at it. Their clothes were gone, but their bags and Melissa’s bat were leaned up against the wall. She walked over to the bags and pulled out her phone and a charger, plugging it into the wall. If she was going to be stuck in here, she was making sure she had some way to entertain herself. She sat against the wall, waiting for her phone to charge.

As Emma waited, she heard something shuffling in the bathroom. Her brain panicked for a moment, wondering who the fuck would be spying on them form the bathroom. Then she remembered that Melissa wasn’t with them in the room, and the logical part of her mind told her that it must be her in the bathroom. She must have been in there long before Emma had returned from her testing.

Emma scoffed heartlessly at the term. Testing. Complete bullshit, if you asked her. Just a cover to torture them to see how fucked up they were so they knew what their soldiers would look like after trying to stop the Infected.

She stood slowly, trying to be mindful of her leg that had begun to ache from use, and walked to the bathroom door. She knocked on the door, speaking Melissa’s name softly. She knew that the secretary would come out of the room quickly, but she wasn’t expecting her to wrap her in a tight hug. But the moment Melissa hugged her, Emma instinctively hugged back; she hadn't realized how much she needed a hug from someone until it was happening. Emma began walking the two of them backward towards Melissa’s bed, and eventually she found herself wrapped protectively around Melissa.

“That didn’t feel like testing.” The secretary finally spoke, her voice catching in her throat as she forced the words out. Emma felt heartbroken at her words, god, no one should ever have to go through what they just went through. And will go through tomorrow. “I felt like I was going to die.”

“It’s like we’re fucking lab rats to them, not people.” Emma’s voice held barely contained fury. “It’s disgusting.” She wanted to say more, she wanted to say that they should try to escape and find a different place to hide from the Infected. That this place wasn’t as safe as they thought it would be. She wanted to say that they were trapped.

But she didn’t. Because what good would it do?

“Can we lay down?” Emma looked down at where Melissa had tucked herself into her side, and the way her eyes seemed to plead the simple request wrenched at her heartstrings.

“Yeah, yeah we can lay down.” It took a bit of readjusting, but they settled down in the bed together, Melissa still at Emma’s side, her head resting on her chest. Emma wrapped an arm around the secretary, and closed her eyes.

“Please don’t leave me.” Emma barely caught the words, but the meaning behind them were clear as day. Emma ran her hand up and down Melissa’s arm.

“Promise I won’t.” She continued to rub Melissa’s arm until she fell asleep, the secretary’s breath evening out and puffing some of her hair out of her face. Emma listened to her breathing and Paul’s snoring, both noises blocking out her thoughts as she drifted off as well into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the last one, I swear! I hope you liked it, it was so much fun to write! I have about eight chapters left in my plan for this story; I'm excited that we are nearing the conclusion but I'm not ready for it to be done quite yet. Feel free to leave kudos and comments, I love hearing from everyone!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in the compound is nearly as bad as life outside of it, just in a different way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back and writing! This chapter is a bit longer than what I've normally written, but I hope you enjoy it just the same.

The days seemed to drag on forever inside the PIEP facility. Everything looked so similar and nothing changed, so Melissa wasn’t even sure if they had been in PIEP care for a few days or a few months. All she knew was that they were constantly being examined and questioned, and they were constantly being watched. Paul pointed out the small camera in the corner of the ceiling after the third or fourth time they had been taken out of their room and brought back in. That had been a very rough night for her, she barely slept and Emma had to sit with her. Melissa felt awful for keeping the other woman up all night, but Emma insisted that it was fine every time she tried to apologize. Ever since then, Emma flipped off the camera when they got back to their room; Melissa’s pretty sure it's just to make her feel better, but it does make her less anxious about the whole idea.

Being trapped in the room for hours on end gave Melissa a lot of time to think, but all she could think about was how much she hated being trapped in their room. She hated that there were soldiers posted outside of their door so they couldn’t even try to leave, she hated that their food and everything else that was PIEP provided was delivered to their room, and she hated that the most exercise they got anymore was the walk between their room and one of the three ‘rooms of terror’ (that’s what she called the testing rooms and medical rooms and therapy rooms in her head).

Of the three rooms she’s allowed to visit, Melissa couldn’t pick which one was the worst. The testing room would have been her immediate answer if someone had asked her day one, but now she wasn’t so sure. They all looked nearly the same; the same bland walls, the same stupid speaker in the corner, and always that stainless steel chair. After about a week, every chair had straps on them to ‘contain them’. The PIEP operatives always say it like it’s a positive thing, and it makes Melissa’s skin crawl.

The testing room became pretty routine to her; she’d sit down and be strapped into the chair, they’d play those terrible sound clips over and over again, and when she was worn down, the doctors would come in and take more samples for testing. She never knew what they were testing for, but she was always too out of it to ask before she gets dragged back to the room. Melissa always slept after testing, and she always had Emma or Paul nearby. They told her that she had awful nightmares after testing, and from the exhaustion she feels the next day she believes them. 

The medical rooms seemed just as bad. Melissa had been to a lot of doctors over the years for her sports injuries, and these PIEP doctors were not doctors, or at the very least they should have their licenses revoked for malpractice. They would ask her very personal questions, and if she didn’t answer they would note it on their stupid clipboard. And they always gave her the creepiest looks when they would run her physical, it made her want to curl up and die and punch those stupid ‘doctors’ in the face at the same time. She talked about these feelings with Emma, and apparently she’d been given the same treatment. Melissa tried to bring this up with Colonel Schaffer, but she kept getting brushed off.

She supposed that the therapy sessions were supposed to be a comfort, but Melissa couldn’t even bring herself to let her guard down there. She had never been to therapy unless it was physical therapy, but this was different and confusing. It almost felt like she was being interrogated again, but the questions were about her, not about the Apotheosis. Every visit, it was about how she was feeling and what nightmares she had been having, and every answer she gave was written down. After the first therapy session, she had begun to lie; she didn’t want anyone to know all that personal stuff about her. Not even Emma and Paul.

Her life was just a rotation between rooms and sleeping. Testing, sleep, medical examination, sleep, therapy, sleep, repeat. She couldn’t tell if it even happened on separate days anymore, not being able to see the sun in the PIEP facility had messed with her sense of time. Melissa couldn’t even check her phone to see the time, once PIEP realized that Emma had smuggled a charger in her bag, it was confiscated along with both of their phones.

The PIEP soldiers were very mean to them, they were more mean to Paul than they were to her or Emma, but they were cold and cruel nonetheless. It was like they were glad there was someone to push around and give orders to. After the third or fourth Testing day, one of the soldiers gave a particularly bad bruise to Paul while he was getting hauled back to their room, and Melissa and Emma had protested enough to finally get Schaffer to keep an eye on her men. She had switched the operative to Melissa’s watch, and the secretary was terrified of him. He would glare at her if she took too long or walked too slow, and she was so afraid of what he could do.

 

 

 

Melissa stumbled to her bed, her back hitting the uncomfortable mattress. It had been a Medical day, and the doctor kept prodding about how she helped Emma with her leg injury. She assumed it was because there was nothing about her to ask about, so he moved on to Emma. From what the barista told her, all the doctors were obsessed with her leg.

“Maybe they think I’m Infected and that’s why it healed so well.” she had joked after a Medical day. Melissa and Paul had laughed, but they all knew it was half-hearted.

Melissa stared at the ceiling while she waited for Paul and Emma to get back. They actually had injuries that needed to be looked at this time, Paul had cut himself on one of the restraints during Testing and Emma had been limping more heavily than usual. So Melissa wrapped up a lot earlier than scheduled and she was left alone in their room to wait. She had thought about taking a shower or tidying up the room when she got back, but she lost all the will to do anything when that PIEP operative locked the door behind him. She wished that she could use the gym, or at least a place to swing her bat. She would in here, but she was afraid that she’d hit something or get reprimanded by Schaffer. That Colonel scared her, it was like she wasn’t human or something.

Emma was the first one to get back, and she was unusually quiet. Melissa turned her head to watch her, and she didn’t flip off the camera like she always did. That was sign one. Then, she didn’t say anything to the PIEP operative before he locked the door, she just walked to Melissa’s bed and laid next to her. Signs two and three. Something was up.

Melissa sat up as Emma settled into the bed and brushed some of the barista’s hair off her shoulder. She could hear Emma sigh, then cleared her throat.

“Today sucks.” Before Melissa could get a word in, she kept talking. “You think doctors would know what was wrong with a medical issue, right? But no, they spend all this time looking at my leg, which has been killing me, and the only thing they can come up with is that I’m going to be limping like this for a long time.” Melissa rubbed her arm while Emma threw her hands up to her eyes, rubbing at them. “Unless I want them to cut my damn leg open again to see if it’s something to do with an infection inside the already healed injury. Which I don’t, the doctor I see is so creepy, Mel. He just looks at me and I get fucking chills.” The secretary blushed at the pet name that Emma had started calling her. It was still a shock to her system that she and Emma were as close as they were; she would have never been friends with someone like Emma before the world ended. All her friends either worked with her or played softball with her, someone like Emma would have never crossed her radar.

“I’m sorry, Emma. Is there anything I can do?” 

“Hah. Maybe you could convince a guard to give us some alcohol. I haven’t had a drink since Paul and I were hiding in Hidgen’s bunker, and I haven’t been this sober since high school.” She fell silent for a moment and Melissa panicked, thinking of something to say. Then Emma cut in again. “I’m sorry Mel. No, there’s nothing you can do for me, I just needed to complain. My therapist told me that I tend to get sarcastic or aggressive when I’m trying to hide my emotions.” She spoke the last sentence in a mocking tone, and Melissa smiled. Emma wrapped both her arms around one of Melissa’s and rested her head against it. “I do really want some booze though. Like a lot would be good after today.” They settled into comfortable silence until Paul walked in, in a considerably brighter mood than the two of them. He sat down on his own bed and ruffled his hair, actually smiling.

“Hey Paul, what’s with the grin?” Melissa poked her head over Emma to look at him fully, and he looked relieved to answer.

“I talked to Schaffer, I ran into her in the hall, and she said that we don’t have to go to therapy tomorrow, and we can each choose to do something with the time instead! And then she said that we could request a meal too, after being so accommodating to all the testing shit she had us go through.” 

“What?!” Emma sat up, pulling Melissa up with her. “No shit, this is real?”

“Yes, shit, it’s real! As long as it’s not too extravagant of a request, we can do whatever we want in the facility and order whatever we want for food.”

“Well, damn, I think I’m going to talk a long walk, maybe find a gym or something! Anything to get out of this room.” Melissa watched Emma plan with a smile. This couldn’t have come at a better time, she was starting to crazy herself in the four rooms day after day.

“I don’t even know what I want to do yet!” Paul came and sat next to them on Melissa’s bed, his obvious joy contagious. “What are you going to do Melissa?”

“I don't know!” She grinned while she spoke, brushing her hair back. “Maybe I could ask for a place to work with my bat, I haven’t gotten to use it since we got here!” The three of them talked about what they were going to do with their time until they could barely keep their eyes open anymore, like children at a sleepover. Melissa knew that she should be embarrassed by how excited she was getting over the idea of having free time to do what she wanted as an adult, but expectations change when you've witnessed the end of the world and you’re under constant moderation by a secret government organization. 

 

 

 

Melissa practically skipped down the hallway, the PIEP operative leading her through the maze of cement walls to a room that had been set up for her to use for the day. They didn’t tell her what they had set up for her, but she was just happy to use her bat, and have a break from the routine. She hadn’t paid much attention to where she was being led, being too preoccupied with imagining what the day was going to be like, and nearly ran into the operative’s back. Melissa stopped abruptly and rocked back and forth on her heels while he unlocked the door.

“You’ve got a few hours in here.” He spoke gruffly, as if he hated to talk to her at all. “Do whatever the hell you want, but when I come in the room, your time is up.” He pushed open the door and ushered her inside, and Melissa held back a soft gasp.

It was clearly at one point a gymnasium, with the high ceilings and small windows at the ceiling, but to Melissa, it was paradise. A large, open space to do whatever she wanted sounded like a dream. She walked tentatively into the space, her bat hanging from her hand. 

“Uh,” The operative cleared his throat to catch her attention, and the secretary turned back to face him. “There’s batting equipment in the storage closet. Baseballs or softballs, a net, and other stuff.” He looked uncomfortable and Melissa felt compelled to say something in return, despite how fearful she was of the man. 

“Thank you.” It was half-hearted, but it was all she could think of to say before he shut the door behind him. Finally alone, she quickly opened the closet and set up the batting equipment. She set a bucket of balls at her side and got to work, grinning at the feel of swinging her bat again.

 

 

 

The crack of the bat hitting the balls was repetitive and constant, like water dripping from a faucet. Melissa would grunt occasionally, a particularly fast swing or an overextension. She wished that she had the right shoes for the gym floor, she kept slipping in the PIEP mandated flats she had been given. They were practically slippers and threw off her swings. But she knew that she can’t be picky, not when they gave her the whole day to work with her bat. She swung again, sending the ball over the net and into the wall with a resounding thud. Melissa sighed and set down her bat, walking behind the net to grab the ball. 

She stood back up, ball in hand, and scanned the empty gym. Her mind hadn’t been this clear since before the Apotheosis, and it threw what had happened to her into sharp relief. ‘After today, I’m going to tell that therapist exactly what I think of his stupid questions’ she thought to herself as she walked back to her bat. ‘And maybe I can ask for more regular breaks for us. Maybe they’ll let us.’

Melissa picked up her bat and prepped for another swing, but a muffled crash caught her attention. She turned sharply to the door that led to the hallway, her bat up and ready to defend herself. 

“You’re being ridiculous, Melissa,” she spoke aloud to herself, trying to use her own voice to calm herself. “They’re probably just coming to get you back to the room.”

She took another step forward and the door flew open. Her operative stormed up to her quickly and grabbed her shoulder in a tight grip and shoved her forward. 

“What’s going on?!” She tried to meet his eyes, but he refused to look at her as he swept the halls as he moved them through.”What the hell is happening?”

“We’ve been infiltrated.” He spoke quickly, sweeping his firearm as they came to an intersection. “It’s the Infected. An old PIEP General was turned and now he’s led the fuckers right to the base. I’m getting you to your friends and then you’ll make a break for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooo, cliffhanger! Apologies for the length, but I felt like coming back to Melissa and how she sees everything was important to the set up I made! Don't worry, I remember it's a story about Emma and we'll get back to her soon! Let me know what you thought, I love reading your comments and appreciate every view or kudo left!


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Running for your life gets old really fast, but sometimes it's necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!!TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE!!!!!!!!

Emma ran down the halls as fast as she could with her leg, trying her damndest to get back to their room. An alarm was sounding and pulsating in her skull, a blaring noise that was burrowing into her brain. It was a right, left, left, right, left? Or did that stupid dumbass soldier just lead her in circles to get to that bar? God, she just wanted to drink and play pool against herself, and now a fucking ALIEN INFESTATION was attacking this ultra-secret PIEP base. So much for a free day.

 

As she rounded the corner ahead of her, Emma began to hear the synchronized marching of the Infected forces. She had only gotten a quick look at them before taking off, but she saw in the lead was that PIEP General that sang that disgusting song about America, and the annoying worker from Greenpeace that harassed anyone who walked by her corner, yelling about ‘Saving the Planet’ and other bullshit. Of course, it had to be someone who used to know everything about the base. Because of course, she couldn’t be anywhere safe or normal. Emma heard that horrible song begin and booked it back in the right direction. She hoped.

 

She clipped her side on the corner of the hall and yelped as she sprawled across the floor. “Shit!” Emma tried lifting herself up as quickly as she could, but her hands were still healing from how badly she had cut them up during testing and it slowed her progress. She pushed past the pain and rose back up to feet again, keeping as much pressure off her bad leg as she could as she resumed her running.

 

Not fast enough. She felt her lungs contract she the marching became louder, like war drums in her ears to accompany the Infected’s terrifying melodies. There was no time for her to play pick-the-right-door, she had to act fast. As soon as a door handle appeared in her line of vision, Emma pushed her way through and slammed it behind her with a resounding thud. She turned around, heartbeat in her ears nearly drowning out the pounding of the boots outside as she looked around whatever room she had just entered. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t the room she had been living in, and it sure as hell wasn’t any of the other rooms she had been taken to. 

 

It almost looked like the lab she had studied in back at the community college, but it was pimped out. Everything looked state of the art and most of the lab equipment looked like it shouldn’t even exist it was so high tech and futuristic. Glass shelves lined the walls, filled to the brim with labeled bottles and test tubes and samples, and a few large lab tables were set up in the middle of the room. Everything was so sterile and organized, except for the tables, covered in heaps of papers and scattered folders with their contents spread across their surfaces. 

 

Emma wasted no time in dragging one of the tables to the door in an attempt to barricade herself inside. A few pages flew off the table as she moved it, and as she picked them up off the floor her curiosity got the better of her and she began reading. She expected a lot of technobabble and information she wouldn’t understand, but she was shocked to see that she understood most of what the paper was discussing. 

 

“Thank you, Hidgens for making biology so interesting.” She scanned the pages in her hand and grabbed more off of the table, trying to decipher the order. Something about infrared lighting to shock capsids… no, it was an antibody treatment! “Holy shit!” Emma dropped the papers in her hands in shock. “It really is an infection!” she scrambled through the papers on the table, trying to read if they had found an antibody, or had finished developing a prototype. “Hah! Gotcha.” She held out the page triumphantly and jabbed a finger at the label for the product. “Alright, IAB-27, where are you hiding?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Paul raced from room to room, hearing that Greenpeace worker slowly getting farther and farther away from him. For the first time since middle school basketball, he thanked God he was so tall. He had been trying to enjoy himself in one of their operations rooms, getting lost in his comfort coding, when the infected had burst into the room. The damn Greenpeace worker was leading the pack and singing about saving the planet. The agents in the room with Paul had told him to run, forming a human barricade and attempting to gun down the Infected forces. Paul didn’t look back, but he knew he only had a minute’s head start, at most.  

 

Red lights flashed as he ran around a few corners, hoping to get the Infected hopelessly lost. In his efforts, he ended up getting himself lost in the process. He made sure there was no one behind him and ran into the first unlocked room he found. It must have been the PIEP mess hall, but it really looked more like a high school cafeteria. 

 

“Okay, okay, okay!” His reassurances to himself become more like yelling the more he said it, but Paul couldn’t seem to stop as he made his way towards the kitchen. “Okay! Weapons and food, you need to find weapons and food, then Emma and Melissa.” 

 

Paul turned on the lights to the kitchen and waited until they fully powered on before entering the small space. He began to rummage through counters and cabinets, looking for any food that wasn’t ingredients to other things or raw meat. He was cradling a large bag of dry oats in his arms from the top shelf when he felt something come over his head and wrap around his throat. He dropped the bag in shock to claw at the offending object that was cutting off his air supply. In his surprise, he stumbled backward and crashed to the ground, knocking over whatever had been attempting to strangle him. When the stars cleared from his vision, Paul grabbed the thin material and pulled it back over his head. It was a green apron.

 

“You could be saving the planet, Paul.” she sang at him tauntingly, standing over him while he scrambled to his feet. “Don’t you want to save our planet?” 

 

“I want no part of whatever planet you think you’re saving!” He reached out behind his back, looking for something to throw at the woman without letting her out of his sight. “You’re murdering thousands of innocent people to save a planet you didn’t even live on until you crashed in Hatchetfield!” His hand rested on something with a lip and he grabbed it tightly, but froze when he heard the otherworldly laughter coming from the Greenpeace worker.

 

“Oh, Paul.” the monotonous voice of the Hive replaced the belting melody she had just been singing. “This world is filled with unhappiness. So much pain, so much destruction. This child came to me willingly. I told her we could change the world, make it better than it was. And she submitted to the hive without a fight. You could too, Paul. You could have all your friends together and happy in the Hive. You could have Bil-”

 

_ Whack! _

 

Paul stood over the Greenpeace worker’s body, which had fallen to the ground in a heap. A plastic red lunch try was held tightly in his hands. He looked down at the weapon.

 

“Damn, I really need to look when I grab things to fight.”

 

* * *

 

Emma raced down the hall, her pants pockets filled with capsules and bottles and a fire extinguisher in her hands. It was eerily silent, she felt like she was being tricked into thinking there weren’t any Infected around. As she rounded the next corner, she crashed into something soft and screamed, her weapon clattering out of her hands. Before she got the chance to fall with it, shaky hands gripped her shoulders and kept her upright. Blind terror took over and Emma began pounding her fists against her captor, because there was no way in hell this is how she was going out, dying because you ran into an Infected would be so embarrassing.

 

“Emma, hey, Woah!” Paul let go of her and she leaned against a wall to steady herself. Her hand gripped the shirt material over her heart to try and help it calm down, it felt like it was bursting out of her chest. 

 

“Fucking Chirst, Paul!” She glared up at him, masking the utter elation she was feeling knowing that he was alive and unharmed. “Some warning would have been nice!” Paul looked at her with confusion and she rolled her eyes. “Never mind, not important. Are you okay? Where’s Melissa? We need to get out of here, the Infected-”

 

“Are here, yeah I know! I knocked out that Greenpeace bitch with this.” He wiggled the lunch tray in his hand. “I don’t think the exit is too far away from here, hopefully we find Melissa on the way out.” He took her hand with his free one and started moving down the hall, Emma stumbling for a moment before moving with him.

 

“And if we don’t find her?” Her eyebrows were raised, daring him to answer that question. Paul was stone-faced, not meeting her intense gaze as he walked. What he said made her stomach drop.

 

“Then we hope she already got out, otherwise we won’t want to find her."

 

* * *

  
  


Melissa kept a good pace next to the operative, cowering as he fired off several rounds with his gun. He stopped her from rounding the corner and took out several Infected. The secretary pushed her hair out of her face and readjusted her glasses as she waited for his signal. They had been traveling for went felt like an hour, but she knew that it had to have been a few minutes at most. He looked at her and ushered her forward, and Melissa followed without a word.

 

“We’re nearly to where your friend Paul had been for the day, if there’s anywhere safer in here I don’t know about it.” He walked briskly and she had to jog to keep up with his pace. She couldn’t see his face through the helmet and sunglasses that he wore, but he sounded cool and collected.

 

She certainly wasn’t.

 

Melissa tugged at the sleeves of her gray shirt as the operative suddenly halted and opened a door. Before she even lifted her head to walk inside, the sound of five part-harmonies filled the air. It was a haunting riff, like it was luring people in. She shook her head frantically and backed up, trying to tug the operative back towards her. But she was too late; he had frozen and the Infected had reached out to him, drawing him into the room. Melissa screamed and tried to maintain her grip on his arm, but the Infected were too strong. She was thrown back against the wall when her grip broke, hitting her head lightly on the concrete. She watched in horror as the Infected closed in on the operative. He had come to his senses and began to yell and shoot into the crowd, clearing a small circle around him, but she knew he was done for. He turned back to her and pulled something off of his tactical belt and tossed it out of the room. 

 

“Melissa, get the hell out of here! Take that and find an exit! Don’t waste time looking for-” His sentence was cut short as an Infected got to him and tore through his throat. The secretary was frozen to the spot as more reached him and tore the man limb from limb, blue ooze flowing from their eyes and mouths. Their song never stopped. 

 

Something knocked against her foot and shook Melissa out of her shock. It was a grenade, the handle resting against her foot. She grabbed it quickly and took off down the hall, desperately searching for an exit. 

 

* * *

  
  


“Paul, I found one, this way!” 

 

Emma pushed herself down the hall, the door with a glowing red ‘EXIT’ sign hanging above it giving her a burst of adrenaline. They had fought off a few more Infected on their way through the maze of halls, and every single one of them had red stains mixed with their blue. She knew logically that they were probably from the hundreds of PIEP operatives that were probably in the base, but her brain kept telling her that it could have been Melissa, Melissa’s blood and Melissa’s life-

 

“Emma!” Paul’s voice jerked her from her train of thought. “We just have to get up this flight of stairs and we’re home free!”

 

“Okay, I’ll try to open the door, you stay down here at the door and look for Melissa.” She watched his face fall at her suggestion.

 

“Emma-”

 

“We’re not leaving her.” Her voice trembled as she looked up at him. “I know you think it’s stupid, but I can’t just abandon her down here on her own.” He sighed and shot her a sympathetic look.

 

“Fine. I’ll stay down here. But the first sign of any Infected and I’m coming up and getting the hell out of here.”

 

The barista moved through the doorway and hauled ass up the stairs. She leaned against the door at the top and tried to open it, but it was stiff and heavy as a boulder and she couldn’t move it. She whimpered in frustration and continued to throw herself at the door, not wanting to ask Paul for help because she knew he’d convince her to leave once the door opened. 

 

“Emma?” She froze at the questioning tone of Paul’s voice as it echoed up the stairway. “How’s it going?”

 

“Uh, fine!” She scrambled for a better answer than that, knowing he wouldn’t buy it. “The door’s just a little stiff!”As soon as the words left her mouth, a rhythmic thudding sounded faintly from down the stairs. “Paul what the hell is that?!”

 

“Shit!” She heard his curse and then the erratic pounding of feet up the stairs. Paul appeared out of the darkness of the stairway. “It was a whole troop of them!” 

 

Emma’s heart skipped a beat as the realization sank in. They’d have to leave without Mel. She threw herself back against the door, and with Paul’s weight added in the door creaked open and they stumbled out of the base. They slammed the door shut again to keep the Infected inside, looking out into the night.

 

The sky was dark and clear, a few stars visible between the bright lights shining from the base’s exterior. The air was cool and Emma was grateful for the long shirt and pants she had. Woods stretched out in front of them, with a two-track heading into the dark. Emma felt Paul stand beside her, his cafeteria tray hanging from his hand. She looked up at him and the magnitude of what had happened set in.

 

“We left Mel.” She tried to keep her voice from wobbling and failed miserably. “She’s just down there and we left her.”

 

“I know, Em, I know. And I’m sorry, but if we had spent time down there looking for her, we might have been Infected.” She leaned against his side and Paul wrapped his arms around her. Emma closed her eyes briefly and gave herself a few moments to collect her thoughts. “But Em, we have to get moving, we need to find a car or something to get us away from-”

 

A high pitched, blood-curdling scream pierced the air, faint but definitely nearby. Emma jerked away from Paul, adrenaline coursing through her. She looked at Paul with wide eyes.

 

“That’s Melissa!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for such a stretch between updates! College is kicking in, and taking a bunch of writing classes really sucks the day to day creativity out of you. But sometimes you get beautiful bursts of creative energy, and this super long chapter is the result! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you don't hate the ending too much! Feel free to leave comments and kudos, I love hearing from you all!


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things take a turn, and lots of things become uncovered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!TW FOR DESCRIPTIVE VIOLENCE AND SUICIDE ATTEMPT!!!!!!!!

“We have to go, Paul, we have to find her!” Emma grabbed his hand and attempted to drag him along with her as she leapt toward the sound with a burst of adrenaline. She was stopped suddenly by Paul’s immobility and turned to glare at him. “ _Paul_!” 

 

“What if it’s a trap, Emma?” He looked at her, and she couldn’t tell if he was desperate for her to understand him or if he was just pitying her. “She had been alone down there, what’s to say she hadn’t been infected and they’re trying to lure us straight to them?”

 

Deep down, Emma understood where he was coming from. It was a logical explanation after all, it wouldn’t have been the first time she had been tricked by an Infected. It would probably be her fourth or fifth if she was counting. But Emma wasn’t thinking logically, not when it came to Melissa. The mousy secretary had grown on her, and in their time in the PIEP base Emma had started to see her as family, not something that happened easily or overnight. 

 

“Paul, let’s face it! No matter what we do, we’re fucked. The damn government can’t even control this thing, and we’re just a tech guy and a failed barista. Even if we get away this time, there’s a ninety-nine percent chance we won’t make it another month before we both get Infected or die another horrible way. So right now, I’d rather go find Melissa, even if it’s a trap. Because hiding in the woods and making another shelter is a hell of a lot worse way to die then trying to save your friend. And if you don’t want to join me…” Emma looked him in the eye, and for the first time since Beanie’s, he looked genuinely terrified. “Then I guess this is goodbye.” 

 

Before he could even get a word in edgewise, Emma had turned around and began moving as quickly as she could towards where she thought she had heard the sound. Another scream, this time with a few obvious melodic echoes, forced her heart into overdrive. That was Mel, and she was with several Infected. 

 

The building was enormous, and even moving as fast as she possibly could, it took Emma a solid minute to get around the corner. Upon rounding the corner, she was faced with more woods, an obvious paved road, and a small parking lot with several foreboding vehicles parked in spaces. She took a mental note of that fact; it would be a possible escape route when she finds and rescues Melissa.

 

Another string of sung notes pierced the air, and Emma was pulled harshly back to the task at hand. She could make out at least a dozen forms in the distance, but it was so damn dark outside she couldn’t tell if Melissa was with them or trying to get away from them. If she was being completely honest, she didn’t even know if Melissa was even in the group. Emma froze for a moment, realizing very quickly that she had no weapons on her besides the vials she had shoved in her pockets. She could try them out on the Infected to see if her theory was right about the PIEP scientists finding a cure, but if she was wrong she would definitely die.

 

Maybe that would be for the best.

 

“EMMA?!” Everything came rushing back into focus for her when she heard her name being screamed to her from across the yard of the PIEP base.

 

“Melissa!” Just like that, she sprung back into action, racing towards the group as fast as her leg would allow. Figures became actual people the closer she got; Melissa was fending off Infected from getting too close by swinging her bat. Several lay on the ground unmoving behind her, and blue blood lay like oil on top of the grass. At least four were still up and reaching to restrain her or tear the bat out of her grasp. After her shout, the Infected turned to her. Not a smart move when you’re around Melissa, because she ended up taking out another zombie fucker. Three to go.

 

Melissa raced backwards away from where the Infected were, putting distance between herself and the threat, but even more distance between her and Emma. the barista was about to yell something to draw the Infected towards her, but Melissa’s shout shut down her plans.

 

“MOVE! DUCK!” From the weak light the stars and moon provided, Emma could see Melissa hold something in the air above her head, and pull something small out of it. Realization struck her like a truck and the barista quickly dove to the ground, covering her head.

 

**_!BOOM!_ **

 

 

* * *

  
  


Emma opened her eyes and lifted her head off the ground. She could feel the clumps of dirt that were covering her back, but her ears were ringing so loudly she couldn’t focus on getting her arms and legs moving. All she could see was the ground underneath her, and even then it looked like nothing but blackness. The ringing in her ears had started to fade from a high-pitched, piercing noise to a dull hum, and that’s when she started to hear other things. Like her rapid breathing. Or a voice calling out frantically to her.

 

“Emma! Em, oh my god, please be okay! Please be Emma! MELISSA!” She heard the shouting get close to her, then felt Paul’s hand shake her shoulder roughly. She groaned, the action rattling her aching frame. She heard the pounding of feet as someone else, Melissa she assumed, ran up to them. “She’s alive, thank god! Can you help me get her up?”

 

Gently, she felt Paul and Melissa get her to her feet. Emma blinked a few times to clear her head as they started to haul her away from where she had been laying. She craned her neck to look back at the spot, and she had to hold down bile that rose up to her throat at the sight.

 

The ground was all turned up from the grenade that Melissa had thrown, but that had been a solid ten feet away from where she had fallen. What she thought had been dirt was actually pieces of the obliterated Infected, chunks of them had landed on her back and around her body. She could only guess how blue-stained her clothes were, and the disgust and panic she knew she should have felt was replaced with a numbness as she turned her head back around. It was shock, she was sure, but for once she was grateful for it as Paul and Melissa led her towards one of the vehicles parked in the lot.

 

“It’s alright, Emma, just a couple more steps then you can rest in the car, okay?” She shifted in Paul’s grip as Melissa left her side to open the passenger door, then she was helped into the seat. Emma made the effort to use her arms to steady herself in the car before Paul closed the door and rushed around the other side. The silence of the car was startling, but the shock dulled Emma’s reactions to the sudden change. The back door opened and Melissa swung herself into the back seat, shutting the door tightly behind her as Paul clamored into the driver’s seat. The sharp snaps of the doors closing sent Emma into action, as if she was waking up from an unexpected nap. She buckled herself in, the click of the buckle making her jump.

 

“Hey, some dumbasses left a weapons belt in here!” Melissa had crawled further back into the car and had lifted up the belt to prove it. Several grenades were strapped to it, as well as a holster for a handgun. If the shock had worn off, Emma would have laughed at the sight; a secretary holding up a belt full of grenades with the wildest grin she had ever seen. Suddenly the car roared to life and Emma snapped her eyes to Paul, who had found the key.

 

“That’s awesome, Mel.” She spoke for the first time since the grenade went off, locking eyes with the woman through the rearview mirror. She offered her a small smile, and Melissa smiled back, crawling to her seat and buckling in. Paul followed suit and then backed the car out of the space, trying to find the exit from the facility. Emma settled down in the passenger seat, gazing out of the windshield without really seeing anything. Her mind still wandered to the sight of the mangled Infected bodies that had been torn apart by the grenade, that had landed on top of her. She shuddered and closed her eyes, trying to block out the images.

 

 

* * *

  


It couldn’t have been too long after she had closed her eyes that Paul gently shook her shoulder. “Emma? You up?” He spoke in a very bad stage whisper, and a grin spread across Emma’s face before she cracked open an eye. 

 

“I am now, dumbass.” She peered over at him, flushed red from embarrassment while his eyes were trained on the road. “What’s up?”

 

“Oh, I was just wondering if you had your seat belt on, we all know what happened the last time we were traveling.” He was clearly trying to make a joke to lighten the mood, but she could only offer a half smile and a tug on her seat belt to prove she had it on. “How are you doing? You know, with everything. Melissa and I were talking for a bit, but..” He trailed off and one of his hands left the wheel to gesture back in the car. Emma shuffled herself up in the seat, twisting to see in the back. Melissa was curled up in the backseat, fast asleep. Her hair was covering her face and she was cradling her bat like a security blanket. A peaceful smile was on her face as she slept and it prompted a small one out of Emma as well. 

 

“At least she’s finally getting some sleep.” She turned her attention back to the windshield, watching the headlights ghost over the road. “And honestly… I don’t know.” She looked over at Paul to gauge his reaction. He took his eyes off the road for a second to look at her.

 

“You don’t know?”

 

“Yeah, man. I don’t know. Everything's happening so fast and how are we supposed to process it? In the past couple months, we have watched the entire world fall apart. Now that the  PIEP base is fucked, we could literally be the last three uninfected people left.” Paul remained silent, and for some reason, that pissed her off. “Why doesn’t that bother you? This stupid infection ruined the world and I feel like I’m the only one here who understands that. God, it’s like you and Melissa believe that it’ll get fixed, but it can’t!”

 

“Emma, I know it can’t get fixed.” His sudden statement made her pause. His jaw clenched, it looked like he wanted to yell at her. “But if we lose hope that it won’t get better, or if we think we can’t beat this… then it makes you think that there’s no point in continuing the fight. And dammit, I just can’t think like that. I don’t want to give up the fight, not now that we’ve come this far.” 

 

Emma shrank back into the seat. She had the feeling that he wasn’t just saying this for his benefit. “What are you trying to get at, man?”

 

“I think you know what I’m saying.” He softly brought the car to a stop so he could look at her. His eyes were searching hers, probing for the truth that she desperately did not want to share. “Emma, you can’t really think that giving up is the best option. You still have me, you have Mel.” She flinched at the pet name, shame sinking into her. “You can’t possibly think that fighting isn’t worth it.”

 

Tears sprung up in her eyes and she stubbornly swiped at them, looking away to break away from Paul’s intense staring. “I don’t know, Paul! I don’t know anything! I mean, god, you knew that I was thinking that but literally an hour ago I was ready to throw myself at a mob of Infected to save Melissa. I just—” She looked down at her hands. “I feel the way I did when Jane died.”

 

She could see Paul straighten out in her peripheral vision. “Well, how did you feel when Jane died?”

 

“Lost. I guess. I mean, I came back here, and I didn’t feel anything. Not until the funeral, then I had to sit there and listen to all these people talk about how wonderful she was and what a shame it was that she was gone so soon. Then after, everyone would come up to me and tell me how wonderful it was that I was there for her. And how she would’ve loved that I came back. But I knew they were wrong. Jane would’ve hated that I was there.” She shook her head when she saw Paul open his mouth. “Shut up, you didn’t even know her. I was her sister, I know her better than anyone. She would’ve hated that I was there. She would’ve screamed me right out of the funeral home, telling me that I was a dick for only showing up after she was dead. You know, I didn’t even stick around for when they put her in the ground. She wouldn’t have wanted me there. I could tell no one really wanted me around either, I mean, her husband kept her kids away from me, my parents really only spoke to me before the wake because I was living with them. I moved out the day after the funeral, didn’t even leave a note or an address. For all they knew, I went back to Guatemala.” She wiped under her eyes again, but she was too late to stop the tears.

 

“I was so lost, I just got a job and signed up for classes out of guilt, because it felt like I had to, but I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I stopped caring about anything and just went through the day, just thinking about how no one had wanted mea round after Jane died except to say that it was nice I finally came back for her. It was still all about Jane, even after she died.” A bitterness she didn’t know she felt came out with her words, and she could see Paul watching her carefully. Her fists clenched, then her story flowed out of her.

 

“Then one day, I had called off work and didn’t show up to class, and I laid in bed, and then I thought…” She swallowed thickly, terrified that he would try to comfort her or be disgusted with her. “I thought it would be better for everyone if they didn’t have me around. Then there would be no one to compare Jane to, and no one to let down their expectations. It could just be Jane the perfect daughter, mother, and wife, without the blemish that I was to her memory. So I went to the bathroom and I—”

 

“Emma, you don't have to tell me—” Paul tried to interrupt her, but she pushed on.

 

“I tried to kill myself.”

 

The silence between them was thick, and Emma felt her whole body freeze after the words left her lips. She hadn’t meant to say it, but it all came out. She had never told anyone that before, not even Hidgens. She fiddled with her seat belt, looking at Paul through her lashes. He was rooted to the spot as well, and guilt overcame her. 

 

“Paul, I’m sorry, you didn’t need to know that.” Apparently those words rebooted his brain, because he grabbed her hand away from the seat belt and held it gently in his own.

 

“No, it’s okay. I’m glad I know it now. Uh, what stopped you, if you want to share?” She could see the sudden panic in his eyes, and shook her head, waving off his insecurities about asking such a personal question.

 

Emma scoffed softly, despite the serious topic. “I panicked. I tried drowning myself, I didn’t want to make a spectacle, and when my lungs started freaking out I sat back up. It wrecked me for a week, that I was too cowardly to die, just like I was too cowardly to face Jane after all those years. But then I got help, and I got back on track. I started becoming friends with Hidgens after that, and I made an effort at work and with school. I think I got a little better. But I was still angry at the world, and angry at myself. But, uh, yeah.” 

 

Paul’s thumb ghosted over the knuckles on her hand, and Emma felt her heart speed. He looked at her with the most serious expression she had ever seen on him. “Emma, I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through. I cannot imagine the suffering and ugliness that you’ve had to deal with, but I’m so damn glad that you’ve fought this hard and for this long. You are an incredibly strong person. But I hope that you see that there is a point to surviving now, just like there was a point to surviving after Jane. And this time it’s a little different.” Emma’s brow furrowed in confusion and Paul lifted her hand to show they were intertwined. “This time, you’ve got me, and Melissa. We both want you to stick around, we need you. Hell, you’re our family, I know that I can’t imagine going on without you.”

 

Emma felt herself blush in surprise as he spoke. Did he really mean that? She had had no idea that he felt that way about her. 

 

“I, uh, I kinda feel that same way about you, beanpole.” She looked up at him and her breath caught in her throat. He lifted her hand further, and brushed his lips gently against her knuckles. The action sent a shock of electricity through her, and suddenly looking at him became overwhelming. She gently took her hand out of his and shoved it into her pocket. Before he could get flustered or try to apologize, she shot him a reassuring smile. She really liked that, but she just didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with these new emotions. She shoved her other hand into her other pocket as Paul began driving again and gasped so loudly that Paul slammed on the brakes, sending Emma into her belt and Melissa onto the floor with a thud.

 

“Emma?! Are you okay?” He looked over at her in concern, and Melissa popped up quickly and clamored into her seat, fully alert. “What’s wrong?!”

 

“Nothing’s wrong! Everything’s fan-fucking-tastic!” Excitement colored her tone and she pulled out the several vials that were still in her pocket. 

 

“What is that?” Melissa squinted as she looked at the vials, adjusting her glasses on her nose. “Where'd you get it?”

 

“I stole it from the labs at the PIEP base before we left! I found some research papers they were writing about creating a cure for the Infection, and they had samples already made! I’m not sure exactly what is does, but it basically works like an antibiotic. You get it inside of an Infected, and the shit goes to work killing off the turned cells. This was their twenty-seventh version of the stuff, so it must work to some degree!” 

 

“Holy shit!” Paul carefully took one of the vials from her hand, holding up to take a better look at it. “If this really works, then—”

 

“Then we have a cure.” Emma looked at the two of them, all three wearing identical grins. “We have a cure for the fucking Apotheosis.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was a whirlwind of a chapter, huh? A little Paulkins, a lotta action. But I do want to say that your mental health is incredibly important. Please get help in any way you feel comfortable, whether it be through medication or through therapy, or holistic treatment. If you ever feel like you can't see a way out, please talk to someone about it. There are countless call centers, and there are plenty of anonymous ways to talk about anything. You are not alone and there is always a way. You are so important and you matter. You are enough. Feel free to leave kudos or comments.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truly the calm before the storm.

They rode in silence for a while after everyone had settled down from the information, but Emma was practically buzzing with excitement; they have a cure. The drive had been mostly woods, so eventually Paul had suggested that they stop at the first building that they saw to regroup and start planning. Emma and Melissa had readily agreed, with Melissa barely keeping her head up as Paul drove and Emma herself had begun to drift off in the passenger seat. But despite her drowsiness, all Emma could think about was the fact that she had found something that could solve the whole Infection; they could save the world. 

 

“Paul, look!” Melissa leaned up into the front and pointed out into the night. Straight ahead was a small shack, with the windows busted out and the door hanging from its hinges. The road veered off sharply to the left, but the driveway was straight on with their car. Paul brought the car to a stop in the driveway and cut the engine.

 

“Melissa, hand me the gun.” Paul reached out one hand while he unbuckled his seatbelt with the other. Melissa passed up the handgun without a word and Paul unlocked the door. “I’ll head in, do a quick sweep and let you know when you can come in.”

 

“Bullshit!” Emma turned around in surprise, shocked that Melissa had spoken up so quickly. The secretary had a fire in her eyes as she grabbed her bat. “You really think it’s okay to split up after we almost got killed alone? Fuck that, we’re going into that shack together.”

 

Emma glanced at Paul and tilted her head in agreement. Paul raised his hands in defense and slid out of the car, Emma and Melissa following. Paul led the way and Melissa brought up the rear, a lot like the way they would walk through Clivesdale when they lived in the hospital. Emma held her breath as Paul leaned against the door to look inside, trying to hear any movement inside the tiny structure. Paul stepped into the building and flicked on the light switch, revealing a single room. There was a ratty couch in the center and a fireplace along one wall, with an old fridge in the corner. There was nothing in the shack, and Emma felt herself breathe a sigh of relief. Paul moved back to the door and attempted to close it as tightly as he could, but the night air still crept through the house thanks to the shattered windows. 

 

“Oh, hell yes!” Emma walked to the only cabinet in the shack, filled to the brim with booze. Shelves full of clear and amber liquids, some bottles half full and some still sealed. She grabbed a bottle at random and turned back to the other two. “We just found a cure to the Apotheosis, and whoever is looking out for us has blessed us with all this free liquor. So let’s get fucking wasted!”

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


Turns out, after not having access to alcohol for several months can make you a lightweight. Emma had barely finished the bottle she had chosen before she started stumbling around the small room. She didn’t look at the bottle to see how strong the drink was, and frankly she didn’t care. Her blue blood-stained outfit did not help give the impression that she was getting drunk for the right reasons, but drank she did. Melissa was sat cross-legged on the floor, alternating between taking swigs out of her bottle and giggling incessantly at Emma’s drunken wandering. Paul, who had decided to stop himself from getting completely trashed in case something happened, kept a close eye on the two women. Emma dropped the now empty bottle and attempted to reach a bottle on a higher shelf. This sent Melissa into a frenzy of giggles, leaning back so far she fell onto her back. Emma started laughing with her and Paul rolled his eyes. He stood and walked over to Emma, which was only a few steps away. Emma saw him and whined happily, pushing herself off the cabinet and clinging to his grey shirt.

 

“Paaaauulll!” She whined into his shirt, pushing her face against his chest. “You’re so tall! Can you get me another drink?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide and begging.

 

“Em.” Paul sighed and rested a hand against the small of her back to steady her. “There’s plenty of liquor to choose from where you can reach. Why do you want the tall shelf stuff?”

 

“Mmmmm, Becaaause!” She smiled goofily at him, lifting a hand to try and poke at his nose. “The stuff up high is all really full!”    

 

Paul sighed and batted her hand away from his face before reaching around Emma to grab a bottle off the shelf. He figured giving in was an easier option than fighting a drunk Emma over it. Emma cheered and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, giggling in his ear. Paul froze in place at the action, even after Emma had stumbled over to Melissa and cracked open the bottle. She must be a real lightweight if she was getting affectionate over him grabbing more alcohol for her.  

 

“Paul!” Melissa called out to him from her place on the floor, even though he was only a few steps away. “C’ mere, we are all gonna do a drinking game!” She laughed after she spoke, her speech becoming a little slurred. “Emma wants ta do it, an’ I wanna do it, so we’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna c’ mere an’ do it!”  Emma was seated on the floor, leaning on Melissa’s shoulder. She patted the floor beside her and Paul sat down with a huff. Emma shuffled into his side, linking a hand with his own.

 

“Okay, so what’s the drinking game?” He asked, brushing a hand through his hair. He looked over at Melissa, who was staring at him blankly.

 

“Hmm?” The secretary tilted her head, trying hard to think. “Oh! Okay, so y’ know truth or dare? You know that game? Well, it’s that, but drinking every time someone asks truth or dare!” Melissa took another swig out of her bottle and leaned back. Emma lifted her head up from Paul’s shoulder, looking a bit more alert. Paul shook his head but didn’t say anything. If they both wanted a killer hangover tomorrow then he won’t stop them. “Emma, you go first! Truth, err dare?”

 

“Mmmm, dare.” Emma took a drink from the bottle in her hand, her grip on the neck very slack and Paul had to hold the bottle for her before it slipped and spilled all over her. Melissa giggled uncontrollably and drank as well.

 

“Okay! I dare yooou to…” Paul watched her eyes flicker to him and groaned inwardly. “I dare you to tell Paul what you told me in that office building we stayed at!”

 

“Melissa! She doesn’t have to do that, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to Em.” Paul squeezed her hand and looked down at her. Emma shook her head and closed her eyes like she was trying to hold back a headache.

 

“No, no Paul, I got dared to, that’s the rules!” She leaned away from Paul to look at him through lidded eyes. “I told Mel that I really liked it when you cuddled me. I felt really safe n’ shit.” Her face was red, but whether it’s because she was drunk or if she was embarrassed Paul couldn’t tell. She moved on quickly, pointing at Melissa. “Your turn! Truth or fuckin’ dare?”

 

Melissa smiled from behind her bottle, lifting her lips to speak over the top. “Truth.” Both women drank and Emma leaned against Paul as she thought of a question. 

 

“Do you think we’ll really get rid of the Infection?” Instantly, the light mood vanished. Paul tensed as Emma slipped down his side. Melissa set down her drink and looked at her hands, fiddling with them and plucking at her skin. She shakily got to her feet.

 

“I didn’t like that question.” She looked at the cabinet for a moment, then glanced at the door. “I need to get out.” Before Paul could react, Melissa was out of the door and out into the night, moving quickly but without purpose. Fear struck him like lightning; she could get seriously hurt alone and incapacitated. He got to his feet and Emma whined, clinging onto the material of his sweatpants.

 

“Paul, don’t leave me alone, she’ll be fine!” He looked down at Emma, her brown eyes pleading with him to sit down and stay. But he couldn’t, not after he had already given up on Melissa once tonight.

 

“Em, I have to. She’s not safe out there without a weapon. You stay here, and protect yourself if any Infected come for you.” He moved to hand her the handgun, then thought better of it and set it on the cabinet. “You grab that only if you have to, okay?”

 

“M’kay.” Emma crawled her way over to the couch and leaned against it, drinking heavily from her bottle. As soon as he thought she would be safe, Paul grabbed the rest of the weapons belt from the doorstep and took off in the direction Melissa was headed. It was cold enough for dew to form on the top of the grass, so following her was not difficult.

 

“Melissa!” Paul tried calling out in front of him, then cursed himself for doing so. The last thing they need is for any nearby Infected to know where they were. He kept moving, listening intently for any sounds that could be Melissa. He called her name again quietly, scanning the bushes as best he could in the limited lighting. 

 

A noise ahead of him in the darkness caused Paul to nearly jump out of his skin. He gripped the weapons belt tighter in his hand and inched forward, straining to see anything ahead of him. A soft whimper cut through the silence and Paul raced forward, pushing through the bushes to find the source.

 

Melissa was curled in the fetal position, her hands wrapped around her knees as she lay on her side in the damp grass. She was staring blankly ahead, and her eyes flickered lazily to Paul’s form as he got closer to her. “I fell.”

 

“I can see that.” He spoke softly and sat down beside her. “Wanna talk about what happened back there?” Paul heard Melissa sigh and used the opportunity to push it a little more. “You’ll probably feel a lot better than you do right now if you tell someone about it.”

 

“I know.” He looked down at her. She was still looking straight ahead, as if she couldn’t focus on anything. “They killed him, Paul. Right in front of me.”

 

Paul felt his blood run cold at her words. “Who? Who’d they kill?”

 

Melissa pushed herself up, still not looking at him as she spoke. “God, I don’t even know! I never even learned his name! And he risked his life to save me from them and he was ripped apart and I don’t even know his name! He could’ve had a family, and-and kids, and-” She had begun to cry and Paul pulled her in, giving her a side hug as she started to crumble. “It was awful, Paul. It was so awful.”   

 

“Shh, hey, it’ll be okay, Melissa. It’s okay.” Paul tried his best to comfort her, but he knew there was no coming back from seeing someone get turned. He has nightmares about watching Bill get shot by the Infected, and he’s listened to Emma explain the sound of Hidgen’s stomach getting ripped open. Melissa shook her head, pushing herself out of Paul’s arms.

 

“No, it’s not, you have to stop saying that! You don’t know if everything is going to be okay, stop telling us that it will be. I watched a man get torn apart in front of me, there was literally no part of him held together. How can you tell me that those little vials that Emma has can stop that violence? How can you believe that the three of us can solve this?” She leaned back against a tree, suddenly looking very sober. “The only way to stop the violence is to destroy them like they destroyed us.”

 

Paul couldn’t meet her eyes, suddenly feeling very conflicted. He knew deep down that Melissa was right; that was his first instinct and it nearly worked, he knew for a fact that the meteor was only half the size it started as thanks to him. He also knew that the vials Emma had stolen from the lab were still underdeveloped, incomplete. They had no idea if they would work or how well they could cure it or how quickly. But Emma was absolutely convinced that it was the solution to the Apotheosis.

 

It’s a lot to think about, especially for a guy that worked in IT a few months ago.

 

“Yeah, this shit is pretty complicated, huh?” It was the only thing he could think to say, and it earned a snort from Melissa.

 

“Yeah, really didn’t think I’d be discussing how to stop the end of humanity with my coworker when I took that CCRP Tech job, but look at us now.”  They sat in silence for a few moments longer until Melissa began to shiver from the cold seeping into her damp clothes.

 

“We should get back to Emma, who knows how much she’s drank while we’ve been out here.” He hauled himself to his feet and helped Melissa up. She smiled at his attempt at a joke and Paul felt relief wash through him. She’ll be okay for now, that’s all he wants.

 

“Thanks for coming out here, Paul, I really do appreciate that you’d do that for me.” Melissa ducked her head and tucked some hair behind her ear. Paul’s face grew a few more shades pink; talking about feelings, even platonic ones is a foreign concept to him and being so open about them must be different for Melissa too. 

 

“Yeah, it’s nothing.”

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


The night ended pretty quickly after that. Paul and Melissa returned to find Emma passed out, the bottle empty beside her. The other two switched up taking up watch while the other slept. It was a very cold night but it ended quickly with dawn breaking over the shack. Emma woke with a jolt, her head pounding and her mouth dry. She groaned, but thankfully knew better than to open her eyes. She tried to roll onto her side and found herself hitting the floor with a heavy thud. She muttered a few curses and heard the other two waking up for the day. 

 

“Good morning Em!” She furrowed her brows as Melissa's cheery voice cut through to her muddled brain. “Did you sleep okay?”

 

“Yeah, everything was perfect until I woke up. God, everything hurts.” She rubbed her temples, her eyes still closed against what she knew would be the harsh light of day. “How are you not hungover, Mel?”

“Oh, I didn’t really fall asleep. Plus, Paul found these great pain relievers so my headache is basically nonexistent.” That statement got Emma up and moving and she opened her eyes for the first time this morning. Not a good decision; the sunlight was flooding through the shack and caused her headache to triple in pain and she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.

 

“Here, Em.” She felt Paul settle above her on the couch and she opened her eyes slowly to accept the pills and some water in an old liquor bottle. Emma downed them quickly and leaned her head against his leg.

 

“I regret drinking as much as I did without looking at the labels.” She threw her hand over her face to try and shield the light from her eyes. “Never let me do that again.”

 

She felt the couch shift on her back and glanced up to see Melissa joining them. The secretary curled her legs onto the cushion and leaned against Paul’s side, her hand absentmindedly playing with Emma’s hair. “We tried stopping you. Well, Paul did. I’m pretty useless when I’m drunk. But the point is, an attempt was made.” Emma couldn’t help the scoff that came up and Melissa giggled. There were a few moments of blissful silence before Paul spoke up. 

 

“So, what’s the plan? I looked around and there’s no food in sight, so staying here isn’t an option. And, now that we have the cure with us we should talk about what to do with it.” Emma lifted her arm off of her face to look up at the other two. Melissa was still threading her fingers through her hair, which was very soothing and easing her headache, but the secretary was distracted, looking at Paul. The two seem to be having their own private conversation, with little headshakes and all. 

 

“Well,” Emma broke the silence, causing Melissa to jump slightly and Paul to break eye contact, looking at her, “if there’s no food we should be moving on then. We could try to figure out a way out of here, drive until we run out of gas and then steal another car. I know PIEP had promised me land on Colorado - maybe we could make it out there and be safe, the three of us.” She could hear the hope in her voice and tried to stomp out the feeling. What she wanted more than anything in the world was for them to agree with her, and then the three of them could run off to the mountains and hide from everything. Maybe the Infection hadn’t even spread that far, and they could find normal people and normal governments to tell their story to. She didn’t voice any of her thoughts and looked between Paul and Melissa, waiting for their reactions.

 

“Emma, as wonderful as that sounds- and trust me, it sounds pretty freaking great- I think we all know that we can’t keep running away. You saw what the Infected did to the PIEP base. It’s only a matter of time before it’ll happen to the whole country, no matter where we hide.” Melissa looked more assertive than she ever had before, and for some reason, Emma was put off by it. “I think that you know that we have to do something, even if it doesn’t work. As stupid as it sounds, I think that trying to stop the Apotheosis is a much better plan than surviving for a few more years. I’d rather die knowing that we had the means to stop it from spreading and failed than die knowing we did nothing to stop it.”  

 

Emma looked down at her hands, trying to think up some kind of comeback. But Melissa had hit it right on the fucking nose; she knew that she was offering the coward’s way out, but she had hoped that Melissa and Paul felt the same way. The barista looked back up at them and smiled tightly.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. No use living with regrets in the apocalypse.”

 

“So we all agree?” Paul looked between the two women. “We drive into Hatchetfield and use the antibiotic to cure the Infected?” 

 

“And we should try to take out the meteor, right? The Hive Mind and all that shit?” Emma saw Melissa’s brows furrow in confusion; she didn’t know about the Hive Mind, Jesus they really forgot to tell her that?”

 

“Yeah, I know the last time I took out a good chunk of it, but obviously that didn’t do much. We’ll have to destroy it completely.”

 

“Well, alright then.” Emma staggered to her feet, her bad leg aching in protest. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought a little bit of fluff and lightheartedness was needed after all the pain I put these poor characters through! And now they know that destroying the Hive Mind is their only option. Story's coming to a close soon, let me know what you guys think, leaving kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul, Emma, and Melissa go back to Hatchetfield to destroy the Hive. Will they succeed or will they die trying?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, folks. The last chapter. (Also happy Black Friday opening day y'all!)

The drive back into Clivesdale was short and tense. Paul could say the same for Emma, but he really didn’t want to get hurt so he kept that thought to himself. He drove in silence as they passed through the town, glancing out of the windshield as he drove. He could see Emma and Melissa doing the same.

 

“God, it’s like a ghost town.” It was the only thing anyone had said since getting in the car this morning, and Melissa hit it right on the nose. It really was a ghost town; most of the windows were busted out on the buildings they passed, cars were broken down in the middle of the street. The only movement he could see was garbage and leaves blowing on the ground as the odd breeze picked them up. It was like the Infected had conquered and moved onto the next town. All too soon, the downtown of Clivesdale was in their rearview mirror and the bridge leading to Hatchetfield was looming ahead. Paul brought the car to a stop and looked at the two women.

 

“Okay, what’s the plan?” Melissa cast a glance at Emma and she cleared her throat.

 

“Well, we drive into Hatchetfield, and then we should probably ditch the car somewhere we can find it again, we go to the Theater on foot.” Emma brushed her hair out of her face and continued. “We can’t breathe in the spores inside of the theater, it can Infect us just like their blue shit can. But we get in, and we blow up whatever’s left of the meteor and get the fuck outta dodge.”

 

“And if that doesn’t work, we fight our way out the best we can, leave no one behind. Even if that means we all go down.” Melissa punctuated her addition by holding the other’s hands, squeezing tightly. They had decided that before leaving the shack, making a pact to live or die together as a team. Paul had agreed to Emma’s suggestion of the idea immediately; he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if either woman with him were to die or become Infected. Paul squeezed back.

 

“Okay, we’ve got Melissa’s bat, three genades, and about five or six shots left in the handgun. When we get into Hatchetfield, each of us will carry a grenade, Melissa will have her bat, and Emma, you’ll have the gun. You’re a better shot than me anyway. I’ll use rubble from the theater when we get there. Hopefully we don’t run into a horde of Infected before then. We each have a vial of that anti Infection stuff, so that can keep us from getting Infected. Let’s get moving then.” Paul hit the gas and accelerated over the Clivesdale bridge.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


Emma moved down the street as fast as her bad leg would allow her; of course it decided to act up today of all days. Maybe it remembers that this was the place where it got hurt in the first place, but that would imply that her leg had memories and that was batshit crazy.

She could sense Melissa off to her left and could hear Paul not far to her right, holding a jagged piece of asphalt he picked up about a block back. They were getting close to the theater and had yet to see any Infected. But she knew they were there; there was an undeniable electric hum in the air, the way you can tell that a storm was coming. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she rolled her head as they advanced to try and ease the tension.

 

Emma heard shuffling off to her right and froze, hearing the other two stop in their tracks. The shuffling continued and the three darted into an alleyway as quietly as they could. Melissa took the front and Emma peered around her to see what had made the noise. She could have sighed in relief when she saw a possum waddle out from behind an overturned trash can, and they moved back out into the street to keep walking.

 

They made it another block before they heard it; a chorus of voices singing. Emma’s heart was beating so quickly it nearly drowned it out, but the melody floated through the air and cut through the pounding. It sounded as if it was coming from up the block and around the corner, exactly where they needed to be. Paul tugged on Emma’s sleeve and brought her around the side of the nearest building with Melissa.

 

“It sounds like it’s coming from-”

 

“The theater, I know.” Emma crossed her arms protectively. “Fuck, it sounds like a lot of them, what do we do?!”

 

“We stick to the plan.” Melissa looked between the two of them. “We knew this was a possibility when we decided this is what we were gonna do. If we don’t go through with it now, the chance that we die in some stupid way not trying to save the world gets exponentially more likely.”

 

Emma clenched her hands into fists, trying to hide the shaking. The handgun tucked into the waistline of her pants burned cold against her side and she couldn't suppress the shudder that went through her. She spared a glance at Paul, who looked just about as thrilled with Melissa’s answer as she felt. But then she watched him nod his head resiliently.

 

“You’re right. We have to do this. We stick together no matter what and try our damndest to destroy that meteor. And if one of us goes down…” Emma saw his eyes flicker to her briefly “then we all go down.”

 

After a moment’s hesitation, Melissa led them back out into the street in the direction of the singing. Paul walked to Emma’s side and she glanced at him. He offered her a reassuring smile and reached out his hand. She took it in one of her own, pulling her gun out with the other. She interlaced their fingers and looked ahead, fighting the urge to stop as Paul squeezed lightly. The end of the block came all too soon and they were forced to turn, facing the Starlight Theater for the first time since the Apotheosis struck.

 

The building wasn’t large or conspicuous by any means; Hatchetfield wasn’t a large town and even though the Starlight Theater was practically the crown jewel of the city it wasn’t much to begin with. A square brick building with a small marquee out front and several sets of glass doors was all Emma had ever seen of it, having never had the cash to see a show when she lived in Hatchetfield as a teen and no time as an adult. But even with her limited knowledge, she knew that the building was unrecognizable. The marquee was scattered along the street, the words for ‘Mama Mia! Touring cast’ spread along the sidewalk. The hole in the ceiling was monstrous and threatened to bring the entire place down; Emma shuddered to think of how huge the meteor must be if it caused that much damage. But the creepiest thing about the Starlight was the pulsing blue light that emanated from every open crack or crevice, like the building itself was alive.

 

That or the terrifyingly loud singing that was coming from inside.

 

There were a few Infected milling around outside of the theater, doing odd dances and bleating out notes uncontrollably. They were all dressed in some form of PIEP or Hatchetfield PD uniforms, presumably guarding the place. 

 

“You think that Hive Mind thing is true?” Melissa asked from a few steps ahead of them. Emma broke away from Paul’s grip to move next to her, speaking quietly.

 

“Pretty sure, it seems like they all share a brain.”

 

“Well, let’s test that theory out. I’m gonna hit my bat on that building,” She pointed to the parking garage next to the Theater, separated by a skinny break between structures. “And then we’re gonna try and get to the top. Hopefully, if the Hive Mind is a thing, they’ll all follow us and it’ll leave the Theater wide open for one of us to launch a grenade into the building and hopefully destroy the meteor.” 

 

“What, you just want us to just like, throw a grenade into the hole in the roof?” Paul raised his voice a little too loudly, and Emma saw several of the Infected turn towards them. One of the PIEP officers let out a deep note like a war cry and the rest turned to face them as well.

 

“No time to figure it out now. GO!” Melissa pushed Emma into action, and the three took off into the car park. They ran down an aisle trying to find the staircase when the singing began to reverberate in the place. Emma had forgotten how echoey it could get inside parking garages and was getting disoriented by the sound; her heart was racing far too fast to be from exertion and she was struggling to breathe. As they turned down the aisle and along the back wall of the structure, she leaned against a wall clutching her chest. Melissa and Paul didn’t seem to notice and she had to call out to them to catch their attention.

 

“Emma, what’s-” Melissa cut Paul off as he tried to speak to her. Emma could see black spots across her vision and knew that she didn’t breathe properly she was going to black out.

 

“We don’t have time Paul! Pick her up, we need to get to the stairs.” Melissa’s voice sounded desperate but fuzzy, like she was hearing it through a forty-year-old radio. She felt Paul’s arms wrap around her before the black spots took over and the world went dark.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


Emma blinked her eyes open quickly, gasping for air. She was upside down, when did she get like that? All she could see was grey and her head was pounding. Or was that her heart? As she tried to sit up she felt a hand on her back keeping her in place.

 

“Em, you can’t move or I’m going to drop you.” That was Paul, he sounded really winded. Suddenly, everything came rushing back to Emma, they were on the run from the Infected horde in a parking garage trying to save the world. The sound of the pounding grew a little louder and she could hear Melissa cursing up ahead.

 

“Paul, they’re getting closer!” Her voice sounded desperate, and as Paul rounded the corner to climb the next flight, she saw the boots of an Infected. She had to bite down on her tongue to keep herself from screaming.

 

“I know! How many more flights?” Paul was breathing heavily and even Emma could feel him slowing down. Adrenaline began to wake her up, and she could hear a low pitched chant coming from the Infected, following the beat they made on the staircase. Their singing only seemed to drive them faster as Paul slowed.

 

“Just this one, then we’re on the roof!” Paul and Melissa’s frantic climbing sounded erratic compared to the steady thudding of the Infected army behind them, and as they reached the top landing and Melissa threw open the door, the first of the Infected rounded the corner.

 

Emma couldn’t tell who was leading the way, but her stomach pitched when she noticed the Beanies apron underneath the blue and red stains. Whoever they were, they were unrecognizable through the blue goo that was pouring from every hole on their head, it looked like they had dunked their face in the stuff. They were close enough that Emma could see the goo fly from their mouths like spittle as they chanted. Then Melissa slammed the door shut and shoved the end of her bat through the handle.

 

“That’s not gonna hold them for long, we need to move, now!” Melissa was already running to the edge of the parking garage as Paul set Emma on her feet, they took off after her, getting to the edge. Emma looked over to see how high up they were. It was at least four or five stories and a good story taller than the Starlight. What's worse, she could see Infected flooding to the parking garage from the theater like sewer rats in a subway station. She barely had time to register what she was seeing before Melissa jumped onto the ledge.

 

“We gotta make a jump for it! Get onto the roof of the theater so we can-”

 

The door burst open with a crack, Melissa’s bat crushing in on itself from the force of the Infected. Emma let out a short scream, backing instinctually against the ledge behind her. A horde of Infected flooded onto the roof from the staircase, their song growing incredibly loud. She couldn’t even make out what they were singing about but it made her skin crawl. Emma felt hands on her arms, and before she knew what was happening she was hauled up onto the ledge beside Melissa, steadied by Paul beneath her. She felt Melissa’s hand grab her own and looked over at the secretary, practically yelling to be heard over the cacophony behind them getting closer.

 

“Ready, Emma? We’re jumping!” She heard a sharp click of a grenade pin and then she was jumping, flying through the air, and landing harshly on the roof of the Starlight. A loud boom sounded from right behind her and Emma felt herself rolling away from it. She heard Melissa screaming before she felt a strong grip on her arm, hauling her back toward the sound of the explosion. Emma looked around her to see that she and Melissa had landed on the roof of the Starlight, and she had been only a few feet away from rolling into the hole in the roof and down four stories to her certain death. The singing had become muffled and distant; whether that was from them retreated or her ears ringing from the grenade blast, she couldn’t tell. 

 

“Mel?” She shakily got to her feet and spotted the secretary on her back, clutching her arm to herself. Emma walked to her as best she could and felt a shooting pain up her good leg. Looking down, she saw that her ankle was beginning to swell. Shit, she must have landed on it wrong when they jumped. “Mel, are you okay?”

 

“No, fuuck, I think I broke my arm!” She looked up at Emma through tears. “I can’t move it, it hurts so much.”

 

Emma’s mind was racing, trying to figure out a solution. “Okay, okay, well, Paul can help you get up and we can try to throw our grenades into the Starlight. Where’d he jump from?” She spared a glance at the roof, searching for him. Looking back at Melissa, she felt panic rising in her chest; she wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Melissa, where’s Paul?”

 

“He didn’t jump.” Melissa took her good hand and pulled out her grenade. “He told me to get to the roof and he’d follow, but then he threw his grenade and he still hasn’t come-”

 

“He didn’t jump?! What the fuck Melissa, why would he do that?!” Fear ripped through her like shrapnel, and Emma’s eyes scoured the ledge of the parking garage for any sign of him. “Paul! Paul, you have to jump!” As she screamed for him, movement over the parking garage ledge caught her attention. Emma nearly laughed in relief. “Paul! Get your ass down here so we can finish this!” She watched as Paul’s head leaned over the ledge to look down at her. Something didn’t look right; he wasn’t moving fast enough, he wasn’t calling back to her. He wasn’t blinking. “Paul?” Emma’s voice trembled, and it was like he suddenly came to life, leaping onto the ledge with far more grace than she had ever seen him exhibit. He opened his mouth and Emma stumbled back to Melissa’s side in terror.

 

“Emma, I’m sorry…”

 

No. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. He was fine, he just was fucking with them. He’s not doing this, he can’t be.

 

He can’t be singing.

 

He jumped off the ledge, landing with a crack onto the roof near them. Emma pulled Melissa closer to her, her ears blocking out the secretary's scream as her arm was jostled. All she could focus on was Paul, blue-eyed Paul with his blue-stained clothes and broken leg from his jump dragging behind him as he got closer. Paul with the new hole in his neck, oozing blue shit from everywhere. Paul singing about how Inevitable it was that she and Melissa give in to the Hive. He was close enough to reach out and touch her when a gunshot cracked through the air. Emma hadn’t even noticed Melissa reaching for the handgun, but she must have gotten it with her good arm and fired. It hit Paul square in the chest, and he collapsed.

 

It was as if time started again when Paul’s head hit the roof. Emma screamed, loud and long as she saw him crumpled and lifeless on the floor. Her shaky knees hit the roof and she sank down next to Melissa. Somewhere the pain of her now bad ankle was throbbing, but it was dull. What she could feel was the hot tears streaking down her face and her throat becoming raw screaming and crying. She didn’t know what else to do; seeing Paul dead in front of her was worse than anything she could come up with. It was worse than seeing him Infected. She covered her face with her hands to try and muffle her cries because she couldn’t stop. It was like she wasn’t in control.

 

A hand frantically tugging at her own brought her back to herself. She lifted her hands from her face to see Melissa, pale and close to passing out from her own injury. She pointed at the parking garage behind Emma, terror in her eyes. Emma turned to see Infected, unrecognizable from the grenade blast and their time in their host bodies, beginning to crawl onto the ledge to make a jump for it. 

 

“Emma, you need to destroy the meteor now! You need to throw the grenade!” The secretary tried to stand but couldn’t balance herself with only the one arm. “Please!” 

  
  


Emma peered down into the hole in the roof, seeing the azure glow of the Hive Mind. Little blue flecks seem to float around the theater, never quite reaching the roof. The brief thought of their pact, ‘if one is dead the rest will follow’ flickered through her mind. Paul was dead, they should just give in and go too. But there was something in her, a desire to live, that pushed the thought away. She finally understood what Melissa and Paul had been telling her; they had the opportunity to end this once and for all, and dammit, she was not going to let her own selfishness get in her way. Emma grit her teeth, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade. She scrambled back from the hole the second she dropped it.

 

The resulting boom created a shriek so loud from the Infected Emma was certain that her eardrums would burst. She looked up at the parking garage to see several falling off the ledge, down to the alleyway below. It was like they had been rocked by the blast, which wasn’t even enough to send plumes of dust up to the roof. What terrified her more than the Infected was the rumbling of the roof underneath her, sounding like it was about to give way at any second. Emma dared to peek down the hole again to see the meteor nearly destroyed, only a slight glow visible from what was still standing. The glow began to pulse as if it was giving off energy, and Emma could feel the vibration rattle in her bones. Behind her, she could hear Melissa screaming something, maybe about how the Infected were jumping onto the roof. But Emma was transfixed.

 

It was captivating, the blue pulse. Emma felt a sort of peace wash over her as she continued to watch what was left of the Hive Mind. It was calling out to her, and suddenly happiness washed over her, unlike anything she had felt before. Happiness was not a luxury Emma had known in life, not since she packed up her bags and hopped on a late-night flight to Guatemala all those years ago. But now, seeing the Hive Mind, she finally understood all that shit that the Infected had been talking about.

 

“EMMA!” Melissa’s scream finally got to her, she broke away from the meteor’s gaze and the happiness drained out of her system. Melissa was being held up by her shirt collar by an Infected, her feet dangling off the ground. She was clawing and kicking, doing anything to get herself away. A song started again, led by the one holding Melissa up, and the tune became so familiar it shook any hold the Hive had had on her.

 

“Inevitable, Inevitable, Inevitable!”

 

Emma reached for her final grenade and felt the Hive move behind her, trying to get to her before she could deal the final damage. It was as if the music the Infected had been hearing was suddenly all around her, the piano, drums, guitar. She could hear the music too, and it only drove her to pull the pin and throw.

 

Yes, it was Inevitable. But not her apotheosis. Theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just like that, this story has come to an end. I did warn you it was a fix-it of sorts, so not always a happy end. I want to thank you all for the love and support you have given to this story and my journey writing it. It has been an absolute joy to add my work to this little fandom, and knowing that someone out there in the web reads it sparks my heart. Don't hesitate to leave thoughts, kudos, suggestions, anything that you'd like to share on this story. I'm thinking of doing an epilogue chapter, so let me know if you'd be interested in that! Thank you, and farewell for now.


	21. Announcement

Hello all!

It's been a hot second, but I've decided that I will be posting the epilogue for this work. However, I respect that some people may like the way my story has ended here and would not like to see the ending I have planned for Emma and Melissa. So, in order to allow everyone to enjoy my work (that’s all I really want to do here, just write things that people like reading) I will be posting my epilogue separately as a new work. Hopefully I can get it up before the Thanksgiving season here in the US. Keep a look out for it if you're interested, and for those who aren't, I hope you've enjoyed the journey that Paul, Emma, and Melissa have gone on.

For now, Perkalil

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you're interested in seeing the next few chapters, and don't hesitate to leave a kudos or comments!


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